Facing Fearful Odds
by The Sarcastic Raccoon
Summary: A year after the events of Hamunaptra, Pyrrah Ananka is in a spot of trouble. A sinister cult is forming in Egypt, and it's up to she and Ardeth Bay to stop their rise to power. But when meddling Medjai families, twelve potential brides, annoying Hungarian men and a baby falcon are thrown into the mix, are the duo going to save the world or break beneath the odds?
1. Jonathan's Letter 1

My Dearest Perry,

Alexander Rupert O'Connell is officially three months old! He's a happy little chap and a real chip off the old block, as the Americans say. Blue eyes like his dad, smile like his mum, good looks like his Uncle Jon.

We're trying to figure out if his hair is brown or blonde, but so far are unable to draw upon a conclusion. My bets are on brown.

He's a smart little fellow, too. He recognises me when I walk in the room, and he can wave his arms and legs around and hold his head steady. Evy's already started reading to him, which I think is ridiculous, but she insists upon doing it.

At this rate, the little bugger will have memorised Homer's Odyssey by his first birthday!

Seeing young Alexander's start in life sparked somewhat of a paternal instinct within me, and I decided last week that I was going to buy a dog. I had my puppy picked out— a basset hound with the biggest bloody ears you've ever seen— but Evy shot my idea down, saying that I can't have a dog as long as she has a baby.

Unfair, isn't it?

So I'm afraid I'm just going to have to sit here and wait until Alex can speak and I can introduce him to scotch.

O'Connell keeps asking me when I'm going to move out, but I think I may have to stay with he and sis for another couple of months or so.

After all, I'm just readjusting to life in England. The weather here is miserable as always, but I'm sure it's as hot as the face of the sun back in Egypt.

Come to think of it, I quite miss the sunshine. Who knows, maybe I'll hop on an aeroplane and come visit you one of these days?

I'm sure there's plenty of room for me in that new house you wrote about.

I heard that there was an earthquake in Palestine earlier this month as well, so do stay safe. I've never been subject to a quake-of-the-earth myself, but apparently they're quite nasty. So try and stay away from objects that might fall on your head, darling.

Despite having just grown another human inside of her (something which I would have thought exhausted you women people), Evy is already itching to go out and explore places.

Old Mum's dying to get back out in the field— God only knows why she can't just stay still and be quiet for ten seconds— but she can't leave my boy Alex yet, even though she has all these job offers flooding in.

O'Connell suggested that they hire a nanny of some sort to give Evy a little more freedom, but I cant understand why they don't just let me look after the baby once in a while. He's my nephew, after all.

You'd think they didn't trust me, Perry!

I know that really they're just being polite and all that, but I think this 'nanny' thing is a load of tosh.

If only you were here, you could knock some sense into them. Or, even better— you could be the nanny! That would be an adventure and a half, eh?

But, of course, you're very busy working for the Egyptian Excavation Society or whatever bloody vulture-filled squad of dumbbells is underpaying archaeologists nowadays.

No worries, though. I'm fine over here, you're fine over there, and as long as you don't take any wooden pennies we'll be all right.

Good luck with whatever dig you'll next be immersing yourself in, and remember to tell me if that millionaire lady-friend of yours is married in your reply.

Cheerio and all the best,

Jon.

P.S.— Enclosed, you should find a photograph of that stunning little whippersnapper named Alexander.


	2. The Journal

**FACING FEARFUL ODDS**

_And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his gods?_

— _Thomas B. Macaulay_

**CHAPTER 1**

**"The Journal"**

Cairo. 1927.

To anyone else, the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities was exactly what its title proclaimed: a museum.

To Pyrrah Ananka, it was a hive of memories.

One hundred and twenty thousand artefacts were kept within the building's walls, and a seemingly infinite collection of books were stored in its stacks.

Every day, people flooded through the front doors, eager to get a look at the carefully preserved items from the Valley of Kings, to see the displays of papyrus and coins used in the Ancient world or the well-publicised exhibitions of the most famous pharaohs' sarcophagi.

But Perry could have cared less about those attractions tonight.

Standing in the front hall, with its wide staircases and tiled floors, its labyrinthian corridors and permanently locked doors, her mind was far from that which enthusiasts and Egyptologists traveled from far to observe.

No, she was focused only on her memories of this place— ones that might have seemed insignificant for a time, ones that she had largely ignored for the better part of a year— and confronting them was not so easy on her emotions.

During the day, the museum's stained-glass windows diluted the blinding African sunlight and turned it into a variety of soft colours that lit up the foyer; now, it was far past dark, and the windows were concealed by heavy red drapes.

The museum was cloaked in shadows, but luckily the curator, Dr. Chalthoum, had left a couple of dim lights on in preparation for Perry's arrival.

The spare keys she had been entrusted with jangled as she slipped them back into her bag, the only sound in the otherwise desolate hall.

She had been stood by the front doors for an unnecessary length of time now, afraid that any movement might disturb the scene before her and muddle the images she was reminded of upon looking around this room.

"How times have changed," she whispered to herself. Many of the events she remembered so distinctly had taken place here over a year ago, and since their occurrence she hadn't returned to the museum.

But the Curator's office needed cleaning out. It had been thirteen months since Terence Bey perished, yet his workspace in the Museum of Antiquities remained untouched.

Dr. Chalthoum, the kindly Egyptologist to whom the position of curator had been appointed after Terence's passing, had chosen a different room in which to set up his office; Dr. Bey's possessions had never been claimed by a friend or relative of the man.

It wasn't as if the Medjai were going to send someone all the way into Cairo, she figured, a move that could jeopardise their secrecy and raise suspicions that Terence had been affiliated with such an organisation all along.

"I never touched any of his belongings, out of respect," Chalthoum had told Perry when the two bumped into each other at a fundraiser for the Egyptian Excavation Society. "But if nobody sorts his office out, everything will just be thrown away or auctioned off."

And so Perry had ended up in the museum after-hours, a volunteer where no others had stepped forward.

Before heading out of the foyer, she cast a weary glance at the space by the front doors. She could see Dave Daniels there now, perpetually disgruntled and largely unimpressed by the state of the museum.

"This place is so darn gloomy," he'd grumble. "Never did like it."

On her route, Perry stopped momentarily to get a peek at the stacks. The shelves and shelves of books— once knocked into a disaster zone by a particularly calamitous librarian— had vanished.

In their place, a new exhibition was being set up: crimson banners hung from the ceiling, their embroidered words _'Treasures of the Gold Tomb!'_ screaming at the empty room. Half-constructed glass cases stood where hundreds of books had, at one point, littered the floor, now awaiting the glittering treasures of Seti II and his wives.

A smirk played on Perry's lips as she imagined what Evelyn Carnahan would have said about this.

"Oh, would you look at this. Edward R. Ayrton's findings are still being flaunted as the greatest jewels the nineteenth dynasty had to offer..."

She pictured her: hair in a bun, glasses perched on the bridge of her nose, a book in her arms as she wondered towards the display cases with all the bright-eyed curiosity of an adventurer's child.

"And where on earth have they put my books? Funny, I never did get around to straightening up that library..."

Of course, Evelyn Carnahan no longer existed. Evelyn O'Connell had taken her place, although Perry had yet to meet such a married woman.

Dr. Terence Bey's office looked as if he had inhabited it that very evening. If it weren't for the layer of dust that had settled on every surface, one would assume it was still a functioning place of work.

Perry switched on his desk lamp and found his pen dropped onto the document below as if his sentence had been interrupted; indeed, the writing on the paper was cut-off abruptly, the words he had intended to return to left eternally unfinished. His chair was untucked, suggesting he had last risen from in haste.

She was forced to clear the emotion in her throat when she saw his signature at the end of a letter— his last inking of it, undoubtedly.

Dr. Chalthoum had left a sizeable wicker basket by the office door so that she could take whatever items of importance she found back to her home with ease, and a couple of crates for the things that could be donated or discarded.

Supposing atlases and encyclopaedias could be left to the museum, she began loading Terence's personal novels, documents, knick-knacks and items of stationary inside the hamper.

There were some odd objects within the confines of his drawers, such as the fully intact skeleton of a cobra, a broken pocket-watch and a jar of well-worn coins that might have been doubloons. But perhaps the most interesting thing Perry found was something she stumbled upon entirely by accident.

The office was all but sorted, everything organised into the boxes for donation or otherwise. The desk was bare, spare the lamp, and the shelves empty. Sleep was beckoning and she was shutting the drawers of the desk in preparation for her final departure when a rather peculiar feature caught her eye.

The last drawer on the right hand side of the curator's desk had a false bottom.

Perry had seen false-bottomed drawers before: Jonathan had stored cigars in one in his one desk, and often sent her to fetch them for him. So when she noticed the illusory wooden panel tonight, she was very intrigued as to what Dr. Bey might have been hiding.

"What do we have here?"

A book. Leather-bound, bending with weather, the spine fragile, the page-edges curling; it was heavy and thick— two inches deep, five or so wide, ten or so long— and held shut with a carefully tied piece of string.

_Should I open it?_ she thought. _No harm ever came from reading a book..._

Perry stopped herself just as her fingers dared to tug at the string.

"No, this is Dr. Bey's," she whispered to herself, trying to fight curiosity with spoken words. "No. No. Absolutely not, Pyrrah. No."

And then she opened it.

Arabic letters were imprinted in neat black lines across the pages, the words interspersed with worn photographs, hand-drawn diagrams and intricate pictures.

What looked like a regular journal at first turned out to contain detailed maps and sketches of ancient artefacts, hieroglyphs and runes, careful illustrations of people and places and scenes of historical and mythical notability.

This was more than the notebook of a curator. This was the notebook of a Medjai, almost filled to the brim with valuable information about the strangest array of topics.

Perry carefully turned to the last pages. A fraction of them were bare, left unfilled at Terence's demise, but the writing before that was certainly interesting.

The date read the twenty-ninth, Thw al-Qi`dah, 1344 A.H.— the twenty-ninth of June, 1926 in Gregorian terms.

Terence's writing below that was precise and blunt.

_'My fears that the Carnahan woman is in possession of the key have been confirmed. Attempts to throw she and her brother off track have failed thus far; they seek the city, and left Cairo this morning._

_I am forced to deploy men to either retrieve the key or kill them.'_

Perry sighed. Said deployed men were either shot by the Americans, drowned in the Nile, or set on fire when their barge was engulfed in flames.

She read on, finding that Terence had documented the events of Imhotep's resurrection and rise very specifically, from the plagues of the Hom-Dai to the people involved with it all.

_'Among those who reached Hamunaptra and awoke the creature alongside the troublesome Evelyn Carnahan:_

_A trio of American treasure-hunters, names Burns, Henderson, Daniels. Mr. Burns' eyes and tongue were torn out by the creature; they may be subject to its hunt._

_A Hungarian man, Beni Gabor; assumed dead._

_Richard O'Connell, a man Ardeth has informed me was a part of the French Foreign Legion garrison that previously raided the city._

_Jonathan Carnahan (note: son of Howard, therefore brother of Evelyn) and his assistant Pyrrah Ananka.'_

Perry flinched at the mention of her own name, and decided to steer clear of his final notes. Turning a few pages to the prior entries, one particular diagram caught her eye.

It was an illustration of a scorpion— or at least, that was the prominent feature that grabbed her attention— with a jackal's head. After further inspection, she found that Terence had included ridges below it, as if the hybrid creature was resting on some kind of patterned, bejewelled surface.

Fortunately he had labelled it, and so Perry was lead to believe that this was actually a drawing of a piece of jewellery. Three words made up the title: "Bracelet of Anubis".

Perry frowned. She had never seen or heard of this artefact before, yet Terence had filled pages and pages writing about it.

"The Scorpion King, Mathayus..." she mumbled, certain words flashing with importance as her eyes scanned the pages. "Invasion of Thebes... Desert of Ahm Shere..."

Hesitating before delving into the deep end of this strange new information, she looked up and glanced around the bare office. She was without company, but Perry felt uncomfortable knowing full-well that she was going to be spending a deal of time reading this in the eerily quiet museum.

So she hastily shut the desk drawers, turned off the lights, grabbed the wicker basket and headed back to her home in Maadi.


	3. The Hungarian

**CHAPTER 2**

**"The Hungarian"**

An affluent suburb of Cairo, there was something about Maadi that made inner-city Caireens squirm.

Maybe it was just that— the affluence. Maybe it was how very British and colonial it was.

Maybe it was the fact that you received a fine if your garden wasn't maintained correctly.

Either way, Perry was missing the slums.

"You live in Embabeh?" Meela Nais had asked, utterly horrified to learn that Perry's residence was found within that part of the city. "This simply won't do."

Apparently her judgment had been final, because she had been living in the pretty little suburb for six months.

It wasn't that she didn't _like_ Maadi, exactly.

A safe haven for the multi-ethnic foreign residents who made up most of its population, living there was definitely interesting.

The British International School was nearby, and so the laughter of the soldiers' children was never far away.

The French families lived on Road 6, the Italians between the Villa Capitani and Aurelia Zani's boarding school on Williamson Avenue; the German and Hungarian Jews lived on Road 10, which was where Perry had somehow ended up finding a new home.

Her house was easily the smallest on the street, and definitely the emptiest. No lavish furniture accompanied the extra square footage that Meela had just insisted she own, and most of her belongings and clothes remained packed away in preparation for her next dig or the unexpected uprooting she secretly hoped for.

Living in this suburb, away from the hustle and bustle of Cairo she had grown so accustomed to, Perry felt rather isolated.

It was safe here, too. There were no robberies, no muggings, no prostitution, no stabbings and the like, to a point where the security of it all became... boring.

After moving away from the constant atmosphere of underlying trouble, it became clear to her that even the slightest dose of danger kept life a little exciting.

Maybe, on a subconscious level, this was why Perry left her house's doors unlocked every night. Maybe she had become careless; maybe she fancied the idea of a certain tall, dark and handsome warrior letting himself in one night.

Perhaps if she had gotten her head out of the clouds and locked the doors this evening of all evenings, Perry would have been saved quite a bit of trouble with an unwanted visitor.

It must have been nearing three am; her house was the only one on Road 10 with the front room light left on, and it was by this light that Perry poured over the pages of Terence's journal.

She was engrossed, captivated by how vividly he had described the tale of the Scorpion King and his fateful deal with Anubis.

She wondered if this extensive knowledge of the myth was merely due to a fascination of Dr. Bey's, or something more. If this was something he believed to be a concern of the Medjai, then was the bracelet real? The books of Amun-Ra and The Dead had been real, after all, so it wasn't impossible that the faction be guarding other secrets.

Further supporting the suspicions of her pondering were the pages preceding those about the Bracelet of Anubis, which contained information about two subjects in particular: one being a set of texts Terence referred to as 'The Scrolls of Thebes', which held all of the secrets regarding the properties of the bracelet. He had written the exact coordinates for the location of these scrolls— within a ruined temple, just west of the al-Fayoum Oasis.

The other topic of his focus was something a little more sinister.

Dr. Bey had obviously taken the time to twin careful observation with collected intelligence as he recorded the formation of some kind of cult.

'The Cult'— his displeased tone could practically be heard through the slanted writing.

Eager to learn more of his hunch, Perry went further back and found that his attention had been centered on this cult for quite some time, now. Three months, six months, nine months... Prior to his death, Terence had been deeply immersed in an investigation.

Did the other Medjai know about this? From his notes, it would appear that he was the sole detective on this case.

_'Nobody can be trusted,_' he wrote. _'These people are brainwashed, power-hungry and disillusioned by the ill-conceived vision of one ruler reigning supreme, with them at his side in close command, feeding off of his totalitarian power. The number of respected individuals— colleagues of mine, from my very field!— who I suspect to be entangled in this web is astounding. I fear they sense my spying, and so I continue to withhold this information from the other Medjai. Any brash movements on our part could mean their retreat underground, and we cannot afford to be kept in the dark at this precarious time.'_

Who could he have been talking about?

Names. He must have mentioned names somewhere in this journal.

Perry analysed line after line in an attempt to grab a clue. Sitting on her armchair, with just the light of one lamp to fend off the shadows, her fingers turning the pages were the only sounds until—

"You should really lock your back door, you know."

She jumped right out of her skin. A short scream pierced through the sentence as her body jolted in fright.

The thin man's frame by the door snickered at her surprise, lurking there in the shadows with jovial smugness.

Perry cursed and shut her eyes in anger. Her heart remained pounding, even when she realised who that accented voice belonged to.

"Beni!"

He stepped closer to the light in that slinky, jerky way that he moved, leering shamelessly all the while.

"You scream like—"

"I shouldn't be screaming at all! You're going to have me wake up the entire street one of these days!"

Beni Gabor had first showed up on Perry's doorstep five months after his 'death'. Since that time, he had paid her five of these late night, unannounced, incredibly inconvenient visits.

"Why are you here?" she hissed, slamming Terence's journal shut and bolting out of her chair.

Beni placed his hand over his heart.

"I missed you so much, I could not bear to be away from you any longer."

She scowled as she pushed past him into the kitchen. His grin bore into the back of her head as she switched the light on and snatched up the kettle, deliberately busying herself so as to avoid looking at him.

Beni was the human embodiment of Perry's guilty conscience. Like the worst kind of lie, he kept popping up and reminding her of the mistakes she'd made.

She heard him move into the living room.

"Don't touch anything." she warned, without turning to face him.

"I have just travelled here all the way from Luxor and you treat me so poorly?" he called back.

She huffed, but quietly got a second teacup out of her cupboard.

This man could get away with murder and find that people were still inexplicably accommodating towards him.

"And why _have_ you travelled so far?" she asked, drifting to the doorway in wait of his answer.

Beni was stood by her bookshelf— possibly the only item of furniture in the house that was put to proper use— eyeing a certain framed photograph she had set on its top.

He pointed a skinny finger at it.

"Is this O'Connell's boy?"

She nodded. The picture of a bright-eyed, laughing baby had accompanied the letter she received from Jonathan last week.

"His name is Alexander."

Beni grinned and picked up the frame, snorting just a little as he got a better look at the baby.

"Who would have thought my good friend Rick O'Connell would be foolish enough to choose a baby over fortune and glory," he sighed, sadly. "And the Carnahan woman, too. I thought she was smart, but clearly that is not the case if she let an idiot like him knock her up."

Perry pulled a face.

"He didn't 'knock her up'. They're married. I told you, the wedding was very lovely."

Beni swapped the framed photo of Alex for one of Rick and Evy's wedding that sat at its side.

"So I can see."

Perry never actually stopped him from looking through her photographs and letters, because they were the real reason he kept coming back her.

Living in Luxor with a false identity and new life might have seemed like something Beni Gabor could do pretty well, but it had actually left him feeling detached. He had sought her out because his past beckoned, and though he couldn't return to it, he could still toy with a sense of belonging.

Familiarity had abandoned him, and it was partly her fault.

... Even if the bastard _had_ gotten off easy.

She headed back into the kitchen when the kettle started whistling.

"How is Marina?"

They didn't talk about Imhotep. Ever. It was as if Beni had once been subject to a mental illness, and had since recovered and chosen to ignore that phase of his life. Mummies went permanently unmentioned.

Perry shrugged as she fumbled around in the cutlery drawer.

"I've told you, I don't know," she answered, wearily.

"She is your boss, is she not?"

"I've not seen her in months. She writes me notes, we speak on the telephone... Other than that, we don't come face to face much."

Beni leaned against the doorframe again and watched her. He looked tired— very tired— but his clothes were cleaner and brighter and better fitting. (With the exception of his fez hat, of course, which looked as tattered as ever.)

That one sack of gold was keeping him going thus far. Or it had bought him some new shirts before he pissed all the money away, at least.

"You should pay her a visit." he said.

Perry scoffed.

"Why? You want to know if she's cut her hair? Changed her shade of lipstick? Gained some weight?"

Beni smirked at the last part.

"Yes... It would be amusing to find she had grown to be incredibly fat. Like a hippopotamus."

The smug glint in his eye was one taken from a moot point, however: Marina Quatermain was one woman who could weigh thirty-five stone and still have men dropping at her feet, Beni Gabor included.

She didn't hand him his drink directly, just left it on the countertop beside him.

"Pretending to be dead is not so easy," he said, after a while. "She will have mourned my passing, you know. But I cannot go and see her."

_I wouldn't worry about too many people mourning your death, Beni,_ Perry thought, taking a sip of her tea.

"Why do you want to see her? Luxor's prostitutes not keeping you satisfied, Gabor?" she jabbed. "Why is she so important?"

Beni didn't smirk this time.

She could practically hear his mind piece an insult together in lieu of an answer.

"I could ask you the same question about tattoo-face."

For the past year, Perry had been meeting Ardeth frequently, happily and in total secrecy.

Depending on the travelling patterns of his tribe, the areas the warriors were instructed to watch over and the factor of inconspicuousness, their unities could take place once a fortnight, once a month, or three times a week.

Sometimes he would find her in the city, and tag along whilst she ran errands; other times, she would have to travel to strange rural areas and pray that a pack of jackals didn't eat her while she waited for him.

To others, their meetings might have seemed mundane.

Hours on end were spent simply talking, until he couldn't stay any longer or she became self-conscious about boring him.

Ardeth never grew bored, though. He listened to her as if her voice was music, a lullaby that he was hearing for the first time in two decades.

Apart from endless conversations and a handful of kisses, their relationship hadn't progressed much whatsoever.

But she was happy, and at some point had come to terms with the fact that she was very much in love.

"How I feel about Ardeth is none of your business," she said, quietly but pointedly, before leaving the kitchen.

"Where are you going?" Beni asked her, tone bordering on that of a whine, as always.

"Bed. I have to discuss something important with my boss tomorrow."

She collected Terence's journal on her way to the stairs, shut off the front room light and left him in the dark with only his cup of tea for company.

"You are not kicking me out, though?" the Hungarian asked from the shadows.

She stopped on the third step.

"Don't make a mess, don't eat my food, don't steal anything and don't be seen. If the Vázsonyi family tell me they saw a man in my house, I'll have you castrated at the hands of the Medjai."

He snickered to himself, muttering,

"Finom, finom..."

It wasn't as if she was lying— about the important discussion, that is, not the torturous punishment.

At the moment, Marina Quatermain was fighting for legal permission to allow Perry to excavate a temple in Sohag, one that Meela had been adamant they explore.

However, she had a feeling that Ms. Nais might take a lot more interest in the pursuit of an artefact known as the Bracelet of Anubis.

* * *

_Hungarian:_

_Finom- Fine_


	4. The Millionaire

**CHAPTER 3**

**"The Millionaire"**

Meela Nais' Cairo mansion was a big, smiling statement of arrogance that stood to provoke envy in the two predominant factions of Egypt's population— the rich, ex-militant British, and the poverty-stricken natives, two parties that the millionaire glided above with the utmost sense of bravado.

Today she had chosen to spend the day poolside; it was July, the Egyptian summer was peaking, and it was just too hot to do much at all.

Lounging around the massive baths her abode housed in a glass-roofed room of carefully arranged flora and mosaic floors and expensive water fountains wasn't the worst way to spend the day, after all.

She would much rather have her feet massaged than be rushed off them like Pyrrah was.

It was midday when the Muslimah woman walked purposefully into the poolroom ahead of the butler escorting her, a blot of blackness against the white pillars and eggshell curtains that completed the room's snowy motif.

"Pyrrah, what brings you here today?" she asked her colleague with a pursed feline's smile.

She didn't get up from the lounger on which she relaxed, smoking from her sixteen-inch cigarette holder.

"I actually want to talk to you about a change of plans I have in mind," the woman answered, stopping not too far from the where she lay. "About the Sohag excavation."

Meela's smile shrunk into a tight-lipped sigh.

For too long, she had been putting all of her energy towards having this bloody Sohag dig organised. Now things were finally being put into place, she was being hit by obstacle after obstacle.

Pyrrah hadn't posed much of a problem up until now. How unfortunate that she was pushing her luck.

The last person who tried her patience had been silenced very quickly.

"What about it?" she asked, falsely replacing the smile on her face.

Pyrrah began rooting around in the Chanel handbag Meela had bought her, which she was positive remained the most expensive item in her possession.

"Meela, have you ever heard of the Bracelet of Anubis?"

The cigarette holder fell to the floor.

_The Bracelet of Anubis._

Meela cleared her throat.

"No. What... is it?"

From her bag, Pyrrah pulled a sketchbook and hurriedly opened it to the correct page. She handed it to Meela, who sat up straight in her lounger.

A detailed drawing of the bracelet, jackal-headed scorpion at its center and all, sent a rush of excitement down her spine. She drew a careful breath.

"Did you draw this?" she asked, although she didn't much care for the answer.

The drawing was unfaded, clearly fresh with charcoal fingerprints lining the paper's edges. It could have been drawn this morning.

"I copied it. From a library book." Pyrrah told her.

_Lie._

Meela glanced at her.

"You are interested in finding this... artefact?"

She nodded.

"I have reason to believe it is entirely possible," she said. "The history behind this object is... Well, the stuff of legend. If it were to fall into the wrong hands—"

Pyrrah stopped speaking and checked over her shoulder.

The butler was stood by the door. A maid was trimming an arrangement of white lilies potted in the window beds. Two massive, soldier-like members of Meela's security team were in the hallway beyond, well in earshot of this echoing room.

"Can we talk somewhere more private?"

Meela hastily tied her black dressing gown over her Schiaparelli swimsuit and left the bright atmosphere of the poolroom, leading Pyrrah into the shaded corridors that would take them to her bedroom.

"No matter how many times I come here, I am repeatedly stunned by how gorgeous your house is," the smaller woman sighed, shaking her head at the ceilings lined with gold leaf.

Meela smirked, and brushed her hair over her shoulder in a fabulously flippant motion.

"It's not much, but I call it my home away from home," she said, and chuckled. "You should see my favourite house, in Aswan. It sits on a shelf of pink granite and overlooks the Nile... Beautiful house. Beautiful."

From Meela's bedroom— a deliciously extravagant chamber of orange satins, purple flowers and golden furniture that might have belonged to Cleopatra herself— Pyrrah watched the city of minarets bristle in the near-unbearable summer heat.

Meela went to change in her massive walk-in closet of gowns, returning promptly in a long robe of golden silk that trailed a train behind her. She sat herself comfortably on the edge of her four-poster bed as Pyrrah spoke.

"...And the Scrolls of Thebes contain all of the information about the bracelet, including its location. If we found the scrolls, we could find the bracelet with the proper knowledge of its uses." she finished.

"And you think that some other people are trying to get to these things first?" Meela questioned.

Pyrrah sat herself on the window-seat and fidgeted with her tunic.

"I cannot tell you why I suspect so," she said, voice low. "But yes, that is what I believe. And I intend to find the scrolls before they do."

Meela's eyebrow twitched. She nodded gravely and slowly, eyes glazed over at the carpet while she concluded a mental contemplation.

She drew a breath.

"We must move quickly, then. Tell Marina we're leaving in two days, with or without a permit. Will everybody be ready?

Pyrrah was taken back by her sudden affirmation, but managed to shrug and stammer out an answer.

"Uh... Yes. I think so. I don't know if Dr. Jeffrys is in town, nor Dr. Lallier—"

Meela waved her hand in dismissal.

"If they are not in town, that is their fault. Just get together as many people as possible."

The other woman nodded.

They smiled at one another. Pyrrah, of course, was smiling because she believed her wealthy friend was going to help her find an ancient artefact before it was uncovered by bad people.

Meela was smiling because this was what Pyrrah so foolishly believed, and it was working to her advantage.

Some plans just came together by themselves, she supposed.

Pyrrah opened her mouth to speak once more, no doubt to begin a rambling about the organisation of this dig or something equally as boring, but the bedroom door opened.

Both women looked over to it.

Meela grinned.

"Don't you know it's rude not to knock?" she playfully asked the man who had disturbed their conversation.

Into the room stepped a figure that, towering at six-foot-two with shoulders as wide as the poles asunder, would have intimidated anyone in their right mind.

His stony gaze bore across his surroundings with hatred, as if he was going to lose his temper at any second and wipe out all of her expensive furniture.

But Meela knew that 'anger' was just his default expression. And she knew that this man was wrapped around her little finger like a corn snake.

"Hafez sent me," he said, deep voice taught to be brief in speech.

"The timing couldn't be better," she said, and then turned her head back to Pyrrah, who was staring at the man with wary curiosity. "Pyrrah, this is Lock-Nah. He heads my personal security team."

Pyrrah nodded to him, but said nothing.

"Lock-Nah, this is Pyrrah Ananka, the Egyptologist I was telling you about. She was part of that Hamunaptra expedition last year."

There was a long, cold pause.

Lock-Nah looked the small woman up and down.

"Ananka?" he repeated, like it was a false name and it annoyed him.

Pyrrah's own dark eyes inspected the blood red robes that twisted around his muscled physique with a distrusting frown.

"That's right."

Meela looked between the two of them with intrigue. There was a new tension in the room, a rigid atmosphere strong enough to cut with a knife. It was amusing.

But she had business to attend to.

"I am very glad you visited today, Pyrrah," she stated, her voice shattering the silence. "But you'll have to excuse me. I have many things to discuss with Lock-Nah."

Pyrrah stood and gave her a curt nod before gliding off to make her exit. Her gaze locked with Lock-Nah's as she strode past him, and he waited until she had departed to shut the door behind her.

Meela smirked.

"What was that about?" she whispered, her tone teasing.

Lock-Nah frowned. Or, at least, his frown didn't lessen.

"Is she associated with the Medjai?"

Meela's eyebrows shot upwards in surprise.

"Not that I am aware," she answered. "What makes you think that?"

He folded his arms and moved over to the window, staring at Cairo below with the same distaste he took to everything.

"A three thousand year old instinct." he said, bluntly.

Meela rose from her bed and drifted to where he stood, allowing her spidery fingers to climb to his shoulders and give them a squeeze.

"You be nice to her, now." she cooed, black irises aglow with the reflection of sunlight.

Lock-Nah grunted.

"Why?"

Meela's face dropped.

"Because I said so," she snapped.

Her fingernails momentarily dug into his meaty arms, causing him to inhale deeply and quietly. Other than that, he didn't flinch.

Forcefully calming herself, Meela loosened the grip and stroked his skin in apology.

"That woman is the only one who can tell us where the Book of the Dead is."

In the window before them, her reflection stood visible where Lock-Nah's was lost in the glinting light. The body at his side pleased her; her skin was almost as golden as the gown she wore, and her face more beautiful than the High Priest himself would remember in their forthcoming reunion.

She brought her lips close to Lock-Nah's ear.

"And," she whispered with the return of her grin, "she is going to lead us to the Bracelet of Anubis."


	5. The Medjai

**CHAPTER 4**

**"The Medjai"**

Perry stood outside the Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo and crossed a name off the list in her notepad: Dr. Nolan Bunbury.

Corniche El Nil Street was alive with the hum of automobile engines, the clop of horse-drawn carts and the bustle of pedestrians, all forms of movement fairly relaxed now that the sun was beginning to set.

The sky was red, and so was Perry's temper. She paced around the front of the hotel and flicked through pages of her notes angrily, her quiet stream of Arabic curses turning the heads of a few passers-by.

Dr. Bunbury was the reason she most despised her current job.

No, scratch that. He was _one_ reason, not _the_ reason. Other reasons included Dr. Jeffrys, Dr. Lallier and that dastardly journalist, Ida Malleson — all people she had been forced to speak to today.

Defeated, she shut her notebook with a slap and turned to stare up at the hotel she had just exited.

Massive palm trees within teeming beds of flora flanked either side of the building's entrance, and lights were beginning to illuminate the four stories of windows that looked down on the street below.

The green flag of Egypt, bearing a white crescent moon and three white stars in its center, flapped proudly in the wind from the building's highest point of architecture.

This was one of the most celebrated hotels in the world, and here she was— once a poor street urchin with clothes rubbed to rags and hands cupped for coins— ignoring its grandeur in favour of work-related stress.

Perhaps she was just sick of posh things today. _Posh, posh, posh._

Meela was posh, her house was posh, her swimming pools and flowers and ceilings were posh.

Marina Quatermain was posh, so now she didn't want to visit her, and Maadi was posh, and foreigners were posh, and that bloody Nolan Bunbury was _posh_.

Her inner street urchin was itching to get her hands dirty or hit somebody or steal something. She needed to hear swear words spat in rolling Arabic, not silly phrases pompously pronounced in any of those nasally English accents.

She sighed and turned back to Corniche El Nile.

The day after tomorrow, she would be heading out to the al-Fayoum Oasis to find the Scrolls of Thebes. The way Evelyn and Jonathan and Rick had found Hamunaptra and the Book of the Dead, she would have her turn at uncovering ancient secrets and a lost treasure.

Or so she wished. The reality of it all was evident once again today: as an Arab woman— veil and all— with no formal education, she would never quite fit into the plans of the greedy archaeologists from the west.

And Dr. Bunbury, however idiotic he may have been, however many gaps there were in his knowledge of the Ancient world and its ways, would always be better respected than she.

If most of her time on this excavation was spent any way like the last, she wouldn't be able to do a damn thing in protest of fetching him drinks and keeping the peace between he and Meela and Jeffrys and Lallier and everyone else on their blasted team.

Wandering aimlessly down the road, a thought struck her, and she took a right and headed up Soliman Pasha Street. Anger fading but leaving her restless, she kept on up to the Al Bostan Al Sidi Passage; she needed to be somewhere thoroughly Egyptian, and that place was the Khan el-Khalili souk.

_This is what I miss about the city,_ she thought, smiling to herself as she reached the bazaar district.

Khan el-Khalili was alive. Rowdy music was playing from various sources beneath the sounds of hagglers and vendors, and everybody seemed to be shouting louder above one another in order to be heard.

Things rattled and chimed, people laughed and children weaved between the bustling adults in the midst of their games. The air was warm with the smells of beautiful spices and fresh foods, and people's lanterns and candles were just being lit as she arrived.

Nightfall was the time when the market was most splendid, illuminated by the reflection of light upon light upon precious metal.

The stalls were packed with jewelry made from bone, gold and finely crafted Egyptian silver. Perfumes, essential oils, hand-blown Mouski glass, waterpipes, silk carpets, kilims, paintings on papyrus and countless other knickknacks bombarded Perry at every angle.

She navigated the maze of narrow lanes with ease, pleasurably absorbing the riot of colours and listening to metal workers hammering away at their creations.

Reaching an inlet in the rows of stalls where a modest teashop was located, she bought a cup of mint tea and took a seat at one of its little patio tables, watching the night grow darker and colder from a corner where she would remain undisturbed.

_No English accents will reach me here,_ she thought, sipping her hot drink. She retrieved Terence's journal from her bag and opened it to the page she had last been reading.

_'Mathayus: The Scorpion King. Born in the Kingdom of Akkad— one of the last generations of the Akkadians, a dying race— Mathayus was the son of Ashur and the brother of Jesup and Noah,'_ Terence wrote. _'Promising in his fighting skills, Mathayus became a mercenary, the last true assassin we would see of Akkadian civilisation. He, Jesup, and his friend Rama were hired by King Pheron to kill a dark sorcerer, whose prophetic powers allowed the vicious Emperor Memnon to rule Egypt with an iron fist—'_

"Masaa el kheer."

Perry was frightened out of the Scorpion Kings' story once more by a close voice, a familiar, dark accent that she only jumped at for lack of anticipation.

"Ardeth!"

At the end of her table stood the Medjai warrior, watching her with a small smile. She hopped to her feet and hugged him tightly, loving how the troubles of the day were so suddenly forgotten when he wrapped his arms around her.

Over the past year, Ardeth had changed quite a bit. They both had, of course, but she had noticed certain subtle differences begin to change him after the events of Hamunaptra.

For one thing, he had garnered a much higher level of respect from his people. 'The council', as he referred to the Medjai's legislative body on occasion, had rewarded him in many ways for his valiant actions that contributed to overthrowing Imhotep.

He had been given a black stallion to travel on, the most magnificent horse Perry had ever seen, and money and jewels would be available at his word. The finest swords were forged for him, and he had told her that a bird of prey would soon be given to him to raise as a symbol of his achievements.

Even the robes he wore now, soft beneath her fingers, were adorned with silver trim and embroidery that hadn't been there previously.

"Kaifa haloki?" he asked her, and kissed the top of her head.

"Ana bekhair, shokran," she replied, drawing back to smile up at him. "Wa ant?"

"Jayed."

He smiled more, as well; it seemed that everything in his world was a little less weighty, that the dark skies had cleared for him for the first time in a while.

They sat, and she closed Terence's journal. She wasn't ready to tell him about a subject as important as the Scrolls of Thebes just yet, so she discreetly slid it back into her handbag, out of sight and mind.

"How did you find me?" she asked, pricking up an eyebrow at the man opposite her.

She grinned when Ardeth glanced about the market and said, very seriously,

"I have eyes everywhere."

He asked her about work, but Perry decided not to moan about her struggles with the pompous nitwits that treated her like dirt. There had been enough complaining done when she worked for Jonathan, and there would be plenty more time to grumble in the afterlife.

"Why have you stopped by the city?" she asked him, in turn.

He reached across the table and took her hands in his, affectionately running his thumbs along the ridges of her knuckles.

"Anta nor a'yoni," he said. "I have been thinking. If you had not disappeared, we would now have been married for fourteen years."

Perry swallowed. She looked to read his expression, but he was looking at their hands and she couldn't tell if he was concentrated or sad. Ardeth often grew sad when talking about their past; the word 'disappeared', simple as it was, wouldn't leave his lips with ease.

"Fourteen years..." she muttered.

They fell quiet for a while. Sat in serious silence with such far-away looks on their faces, the pair of them brought about an aura of gloom to the little tea stand, like people who had just received some very bad news.

It didn't last long, though.

"Pyrrah, the council have elected me chieftain of all twelve Medjai tribes."

Ardeth's words snapped her out of a drifting train of thought, and she looked up at him and blinked.

The only thing she could think to blurt out was, "All twelve?"

From what he had taught her, she knew the twelve tribes of Medjai were vast enough to comprise an army, and their points of station covered a lot of North Africa and the Middle East. She didn't know how the tribes' leaders were assigned or how they interacted, but the responsibility of leading all twelve of them sounded colossal.

He nodded.

She drew a breath and beamed at him.

"That's fantastic, Ardeth!" She leaned forward and gave him a loud, happy kiss on the cheek, which made him smile. "Mabrook! Mabrook."

But he still wasn't as celebratory as one should have been in his position. In fact, a sudden weariness had crept over him, and he had yet to look her in the eye.

"You must understand that great things are expected of me. I am to uphold the honour of our people." he told her.

She nodded, albeit in growing confusion. He was beginning to worry her.

For thirteen months she had known Ardeth, and in that time she had learned to tell when he was hiding an unsettled state of mind. Granted, he was harder to read than the likes of Jonathan (who was as overdramatic as they came with regards to letting his feelings be known), but she could tell when he was on edge.

Where was this conversation heading?

She found out when he looked up at her with an expression that was dark and determined, spare his eyes that glimmered with childish hope.

"Come back to my tribe with me. Tonight."

Her eyes went wide.

"Tonight?!"

"Tonight."

He was completely serious. Perry pulled her hands out of his and folded them nervously on her chest.

What was he asking her to do? Get on his horse and ride off into the night with him, dropping all responsibilities and cares in the world? He hadn't even _hinted_ at this prior to now.

Why was he asking so suddenly? For a year, she had been waiting for the day he'd finally invite her on such a trip. He'd always put it off, always been caught up in other things. They both had— so why was it so urgent that she go with him _tonight_?

She thought about what actually going through with it would entail.

It wasn't as if she had a friend who would sorely miss her companionship, and her house in Maadi could crumble to dust for all she cared.

Truthfully, she'd rather not travel to the suburbs, entirely alone, and have a lonesome night's sleep precede another trying day.

Dr. Bunbury would be the least of her concerns; the thought of walking out on all of her snotty superiors was a tantalising one, to say the least.

And Ardeth's tribe, she reminded herself, was _her_ tribe. There would be members who she had known as a little girl, relatives even. The family she had been deprived of.

She was so very close to nodding, so very close to saying yes. A smile broke out before she could suppress it, which visibly filled Ardeth with even more hope for an affirmative answer.

But then she sighed with the utmost frustration.

"No. I can't."

The optimism in his eyes died. A sad sight, since Ardeth was a pessimist most of the time.

"What is the matter?" he asked.

Perry's heart broke a little at the hurt look on his face. Disappointing him was the last thing she wanted, but she had no choice.

"I'm going on an excavation the day after tomorrow." she said.

Ardeth frowned in puzzlement, traces of annoyance beginning to show following the let-down.

"Pyrrah, you don't understand the importance—"

"No, no, I would sacrifice anything else to go with you," she quickly corrected him, before he could even finish his sentence. "This excavation is different."

The hurt look eased a little, and he waited for her to continue her explanation.

She turned around and retrieved Terence's journal from her Chanel bag, which hung on the side of her chair. Ardeth watched, slightly befuddled, as she produced the old, leather-bound book from its confines.

"This is Terence's journal."

She thrust it towards him.

"Terence Bey?" he clarified.

She nodded. Ardeth gingerly took the book from her grasp, clearly finding it strange to be holding a belonging of his deceased friend and fellow Medjai. If he wondered why Perry happened to be in possession of this, he saved the question for later.

"I've been meaning to talk to you about this," she said, as he untied the string and carefully opened the pages. "Before he died, Terence was investigating the formation of a cult. He believed that they are after a sacred artefact known as the Bracelet of Anubis."

She directed him to the correct section of the book, and he scanned the right-to-left writing that was inked in such neat rows.

He tapped the back of his hand against the open pages.

"Why did Terence not inform me of this... cult?" he asked her, shaking his head.

"Dr. Bey was on the inside, and these people were suspicious of him. He wrote that one wrong move on the part of the Medjai could put his entire investigation in danger." she explained.

Keeping her voice low, Perry informed Ardeth of all she had learned thus far from Terence's writings. She told him of the workings of The Cult and their quest for Anubis' bracelet, and the Scrolls of Thebes and her excavation to find them.

There was no need to convince Ardeth of the reality of this all. He was a Medjai, and their faith in such otherworldly powers was strong enough to guard the world's greatest secrets for thousands of years.

In such fashion, the Scorpion King's name was one familiar to him, as was the tale behind the Bracelet of Anubis; the Scrolls of Thebes, surprisingly, were a foreign concept.

By the time he closed Terence's journal, the other seats around the tea stand were empty, and the riot of the souk had died down a considerable amount.

"You are right," he said, shoulders dropping a tad in defeat. "The scrolls must be found as quickly as possible."

Even though she had justified her reasons for not travelling to his tribe, Perry felt no better. She felt rotten, in fact.

Nothing would please her more than allowing Ardeth to get them lost in the desert, to let him take her to the middle of nowhere, to have her meet his family.

This was the unexpected uprooting she spent lonely nights wishing for, the ever-exciting chance for the adventure that her life lacked so recently.

The more she thought about it, the more appealing his offer became.

But she knew that finding those scrolls was important. Terence knew their location, and it was only right to do what he would have in her position. Perhaps it was the instinct of a Medjai that kept her following her head, not her heart.

"My men and I will be travelling north, starting tomorrow." he told her, scratching his beard thoughtfully. "Once we reach Tanta, I will head back to my tribe and send some people to oversee the rest of your excavation."

Perry nodded.

"What shall I do if the scrolls are found before that?"

"Tell nobody. Keep them on your person until my men arrive."

She nodded, and then they fell silent again. Ardeth seemed to be thinking deeply about something, and that weary look had returned to his face. He wasn't happy.

In her head, Jonathan's voice— of all bloody voices— provided the statement to ice the cake.

_Well done, sweetheart. You've really mucked things up for yourself, haven't you?_

She pinched the bridge of her nose and told that voice to shut up.

"I'm sorry." she said to Ardeth one last time.

He looked up from the table, soon providing a half-hearted smile.

"La taqlaqi."

He stood and made to move away from the seats by the tea stand, and for a moment she thought he was leaving her alone with only a passive-aggressive comment as food for thought.

But then he stopped and motioned for her to join him, so she smiled meekly and hurried along to his side.

"I will make it work," he said quietly, wrapping an arm around her shoulders as they headed off into the river of market stalls. He seemed to be talking to himself more than she.

"Make what work?" she asked.

He looked down at her.

"It does not matter," he said. "Now. I must buy some sugar. If I forget to bring sugar home one more time, my sister will behead me."

* * *

_Arabic:_

_Masaa el kheer- Good evening_

_Kaifa haloki? – How are you?_

_Ana bekhair, shokran. Wa ant? – Fine, thank you. You?_

_Jayed. – Good._

_Anta nor a'yoni – Light of my eyes_

_La taqlaqi- Don't worry_


	6. The Baby

**CHAPTER 5**

**"The Baby"**

There was something very different about Marina Quatermain.

Perry had seen it as soon as she opened the front door, an action that spoke volumes in itself. There was no butler, no maid to welcome her into the woman's Fort Brydon home; instead, the bright, crooked smile of Marina herself had greeted her arrival.

"Pyrrah, darling, how good to see you!" she had gushed so effervescently.

Perry was quite taken aback by the warmth with which she had ushered her into the penthouse apartment.

The first time she had met Marina, she had answered the door with a cigarette in her hand and a revealing silk dress clinging to her curves— all smoke and glamour and heavy eyelashes that she batted seductively at poor Jonathan.

All that was gone now. That silk gown had been traded in for dowdy trousers, a wrinkled blouse, and an oversized cardigan that old-Marina wouldn't have been caught dead in.

Her hair, once glossy with perfect finger waves, was left natural and undone, untouched by the iron that previously gave it shimmering marcel curls. Her face bore little to no makeup, and there was a new sensibility to her presence in replacement of that former, tense hostility.

"Please, sit down," Marina urged Perry, gesturing to the sofas in her lounge. "I just have to end a telephone call with Martyn Kennard, it shan't take long."

Wordless in surprise, Perry did as she was told and took a seat in the living room, observing her surroundings with a growing feeling of displacement.

The entire suite was different, subtly but significantly. Normally there would have been a couple of tumblers of scotch sitting around (even if it was seven o'clock in the morning), the record player garbling away in the corner and the telephone ringing off the hook as the hostess stomped about and yelled things into a veil of tobacco smoke.

But all she could hear was the clock ticking on the wall, and the soft tone of Marina's clipped English accent as she talked into the phone on her desk.

She wondered what Jonathan would have to say about all this.

"Alright, then. Goodbye." Marina hung up the phone and sighed, breezing into the lounge and plopping herself onto the couch cushions like she hadn't sat down for hours.

"How've you been, love?"

Perry returned the smile she continued to bear.

"Very well, thank you. It's funny, I've not been around here in so long..."

Marina nodded and gave a little laugh, looking around her own home as if acknowledging that things had indeed changed.

"Hmm. Well, everyone's been busy, haven't they?" she chuckled, with a smile and a shrug. An inquisitory look passed over her face, and she tilted her head. "How's everybody in England?"

Perry knew immediately who she was asking about.

Jonathan had left Egypt without saying goodbye to Marina. The extent of their relationship was largely unknown to Perry, but what she had seen of it made her thankful that sex and sexual promiscuity had never complicated her own life.

At one point, Jonathan had been the lovestruck one, unable to get past the heartbreak she had caused him when they were young.

Something had changed, though. Perhaps, after the events of Hamunaptra, Jonathan had realised that he didn't need her after all.

And now Marina was the one that sat in longing.

"Good, good," Perry told her. "Evelyn's son is three months old now. Jonathan's just in love with him."

The blonde woman blinked, and shifted in her seat to cover the bitterness that coated her smile.

Evelyn and she weren't the best of friends, that much she knew, but Perry got the feeling that Jonathan's mentioning was the reason behind her sudden discomfort.

_If you don't want to hear about him, don't bloody well ask._

"What's his name, then?"

"Alexander."

"Alexander," she repeated, nodding at the coffee table. "Let me guess— blue eyes?"

Perry raised an eyebrow, and told her she was right. Marina shrugged with a sense of satisfaction, now more at ease with the conversation.

"Jonny and Evy's mother was Egyptian, and yet those blue eyes keep popping up in the family," she sighed. "Strong genes, that."

Perry might have pointed out that Rick had blue eyes, but found herself too confused to say anything for a moment.

'The family' could only pertain to (aside from Alex) Jonathan and Evy— they had no other siblings in whom the gene might 'pop up'— and Evy had brown eyes, which left the entire sentence rather nonsensical.

"Anyway, I trust they're happy and healthy and all that," Marina went on. "It's none of my beeswax, really, is it?"

She chuckled nervously, in a whinnying sort of way that left the other woman very perturbed. Marina was acting so out of sorts, so anxious and under-confident that it was as if her personality had taken a severe battering.

"Ms. Quatermain, I assure you the O'Connells and Jonathan are fine. However, I really need to talk to you about our upcoming excavation." Perry stated, desperately trying to change the subject.

Marina folded her arms and settled further into the couch cushions, nodding in a gesture that said she was listening.

Perry had been dreading this part, the part where she told Marina that she and Meela were going to completely defy her and put her reputation in jeopardy. The fact that the woman looked to be emotionally flimsy only made matters worse.

"We are pushing back the Sohag dig in favour of a new project... That we are going ahead with tomorrow."

For a second, Marina just stared at her.

Then, a bewildered frown became the precursor to one bitten word:

"What?"

_Prepare yourself for a bollocking_, Perry thought, finding Jonathan's language apt in this situation. She didn't know what a 'bollock' was, but he often used the term in regards to situations where Evy had berated him.

Marina looked more annoyed at her own puzzlement than anything. Her stare made the other lady cast her eyes to the carpet, completely aware of how at fault she was.

"Do you know how—"

What might have spiralled into an irritated lecture and demands of explanations was cut short when a strange, wailing noise pierced her sentence in half.

Perry looked to the other end of the suite, eyes following the direction of the sound. It was when Marina shut her eyes wearily, defeat replacing agitation, that she realised she was hearing a baby's cry.

"Is that a baby?" she asked.

Marina huffed and ran a hand though her hair.

"Would you excuse me a second?"

And then she bustled off, sweeping across the room and disappearing through a doorway to tend to the screaming.

Perry sat stock still, wondering if she was understanding things correctly here. There was a baby in Marina Quatermain's house.

Marina, who she hadn't seen in person in months and who had changed so vastly since their last encounter.

She got to her feet and edged towards the infant's wailing, partly out of nosiness and partly in wondering if the woman needed assistance.

Was it _her_ baby? Something didn't add up here, seeing how she had never once mentioned any child in the time they'd known each other. As if it was a secret.

Before she got too far, though, Marina stepped back into the room, now holding the baby in her arms.

"I'm sorry about this," she mumbled to Perry, affectionately brushing her finger along the infant's plump cheek. "She was sleeping, I didn't expect her to wake up."

The child was no longer crying, but it was alert to its surroundings. Holding onto Marina's cardigan with chubby little fingers, its wide eyes caught sight of Perry and watched her with curiosity.

Perry didn't know what to do. Suddenly her pressing questions were replaced by raised eyebrows and a grin, and she found herself waggling her fingers at the baby.

The little human's face broke into a smile, and it giggled in delight and waved one of its arms around in excitement.

"This is Theodora Quatermain," Marina said, proudly, smiling at the youngster's happiness.

Theodora had a thin spread of soft, golden hair atop her head, and the most beautiful set of sky-coloured eyes.

"Is she... yours?" Perry asked the woman.

Marina's smile became tight-lipped, and she sighed sadly at the giggling baby. A far-off look took over her, as if she had been reminded of a sour truth.

"No," she said. "My brother's daughter. He and his wife died in an automobile accident five months ago. Theodora was orphaned at four weeks."

Perry gasped, and placed a hand over her heart.

"That's awful!"

Marina nodded, dolefully.

"Yes, it is tragic. But I've decided to raise her as my own, give her a good life."

The baby gurgled and said "_Ba!_", grabbing hold of its guardian's nose in triumph.

Perry watched her, how jumpy and wriggly and boisterous with glee she was.

What dreadful fates this little one had been subject to already in her short life; perhaps Marina had never mentioned her because it was all so upsetting.

"That is very noble of you," she told her. "Jazaka Allahu khairan."

Marina smiled, although she obviously didn't know what that last sentiment meant.

"Thank you," she said. "It's all a bit overwhelming, you know. I have to make sure this jazzy little dame turns out alright."

She tapped Theodora on the nose, and the baby girl grabbed her finger and yanked it around in the air.

"Well, you know, you don't have to be so alone. If you ever need a helping hand... I'm always around." Perry offered, giving her a genuine smile.

Marina looked up at her with hesitation, but eventually nodded in appreciation when she accepted the sincerity of the statement.

Perry wasn't a mother, nor had children concerned her for a long time. In fact, she couldn't remember the last time she had been around a baby.

Living on the streets as a teenager she had decided she'd rather die than have children, that another life would always be second to her own and that it would be positively selfish to bring a child into a world so filled with vile realities.

And working for Jonathan, she hadn't had a second spare to even think about a family.

But Marina was alone— by her own decision, according to her seclusion this past year— and hardly streetwise.

Money was perhaps her only advantage, because she lacked the survival instinct possessed by those who had faced hardships, and she was obviously lost when maternal instincts forced themselves above her self-centred nature and life of luxury and seduction and booze.

It was the least she could do to offer her help.

"I appreciate that," Marina whispered, and kissed Theodora on her forehead.

After that, she wasn't so angry about the excavation situation.

Perry sat her down and explained that there was currently competition to get to a particular artefact, and that the dig would be short and successful.

She didn't mention the Scrolls of Thebes or Bracelet of Anubis, as Marina (with her Quatermain-esque knowledge of curses and legends and black magic) might have caught on to the... _supernatural _aspect of it all.

But she didn't, and by the time Perry left Fort Brydon, Theodora had drifted off back to sleep.

Upon returning to Maadi, she found somebody else immersed in the Land of Nod.

"Beni," she snapped at the sleeping Hungarian on the couch.

Beni's thin body was sprawled across her sofa, his fez hat in his hand and his clothes the same, wrinkled way they had been two days ago.

His winced in his sleep and his face scrunched itself up for a moment, and then he relaxed again with a sigh.

Wordlessly, she moved over to the bottom of the couch where his feet hung over the arm, toes poking shamelessly out of the holes in his ragged, dirty socks, and picked up one of the shoes he had kicked off onto the carpet.

"_Jaj!_" he shrieked, when she launched it at his face and startled him out of his slumber. "That is no way to wake a guest!"

"Why are you still here?!"

She knew it was three hundred miles from Luxor to Cairo, but it was time she asserted that he had outstayed his welcome.

Truthfully, Perry enjoyed the company— even if it _was_ in the form of a thieving little rat like Beni— but she would sooner cut off one of her own limbs than tell him so.

He grinned, and yawned, and cracked the bones in his neck as he propped himself up.

"The Vázsonyi family are very nice, you know. You could have told me your neighbours were Hungarian." he said, rubbing his eyes as he smirked at her.

_Oh, the bastard is going to have everyone thinking I'm a prostitute,_ she thought.

She put a hand on her hip.

"I told you not to be seen."

"Don't worry. I am your loveable second cousin, Laszlo Kiss, from Debrecen," he told her, with a mischievous snort.

Perry rolled her eyes and left the room, exasperated by the utter incorrigibility of this man. She had given up trying to stop him from eating her food by now, too, and he had already broken a clock on her mantle-piece.

Why did she tolerate him? She didn't have a logical explanation, but she still snickered a little when she imagined him coming up with such a name as 'Laszlo Kiss'.

When she reached the kitchen and began to sort through her mail, he still hadn't gotten off the couch. Three empty bottles of vodka stood on the table, and she wondered when he had gone to the city to buy them and with what money.

"Did you trade your heart in for another liver?" she called through to the other room.

"Yes," he responded, still out of sight. "So I can drink more and care less."

Knowing that it would get him up and off the couch, Perry shouted, "I went to see Marina," and he was in the kitchen like a hungry puppy.

Trying to act nonchalant while he waited for her to spill the beans, Beni leaned against the little dining table and folded his arms.

"She has a baby."

Manila envelope after manila envelope, she tore her eyes away from the letters to see the state of shock that had no doubt taken hold of him.

As expected, his bloodshot, blue eyes were like saucers, narrow shoulders frozen in place, entire body stiff like he had seen danger in his presence.

"_Her_ baby?" he asked, after a long time of horrified silence.

Perry was tempted to give him a false answer— _yes, and you're the father, Beni!_— and see if he suffered heart palpitations, but her conscience got the better of her.

"No," she sighed, dropping the mail down on the tabletop. "Her brother's. It's orphaned, and she's raising it."

There was no new letter from Jonathan, yet. His next one would probably arrive next week, which was just as well since her reply wouldn't have reached Britain yet.

She wondered, if she _were_ to drop everything and leave with Ardeth, how she would keep in contact with him. There were no postal offices in the middle of the desert.

Beni slowly turned his head to stare at the floor, frowning at the tiles with faded horror but newborn confusion.

"Marina does not have a brother."

Perry looked up at him.

"What?"

He looked back at her with worried, annoyed eyes.

"She is an only child. It is why she is so spoiled."

He must have been lying. How could Beni have known, anyway?

She would have dismissed his responses, except that he had no reason to lie, nor did it seem like something he would do. Yes, Beni only wanted to see Marina for a shag or two, but he wasn't finding this funny.

It was no joke.

For the rest of the day, Perry pondered Marina's statements. She concluded that only reason she would lie about her situation was if the baby _was_ actually hers— in which case, one question remained:

Who was Theodora Quatermain's father?

* * *

_Arabic:_

_Jazaki Ellahu Khairan - May Allah reward you in goodness._

_Hungarian:_

_Jaj - Ouch_

* * *

**a/n: So, here's the deal. New job, new house, cluster of birthdays, billions of appointments, etcetera, etcetera. Plus, the lovely case of writer's block that is plaguing so many at the moment has reached yours truly. So, I shall post what chapters I wrote a couple weeks back (20-something, I think?) when I can, and we'll hope inspiration returns. There are messages I need to reply to (**_**FeliciaFelicis**_** and **_**Se acerca el invierno**_**, that's you), and I need to review "1925", "Wealthy Bastards" and "Boats Against the Current", (fantastic stories, might I add) among other things. I promise everybody that all of these things will come in time—at the moment, however, everything's just a bit pickled.**


	7. Jonathan's Letter 2

My Dearest Perry,

The nanny's name is Yvette.

Yvette de Lamarliere. That's right, they went ahead and hired her.

She's French, a Parisian. Lived in England for five years, working odd jobs in cafes and shops and such while she cares for her mad uncle or something.

Evy advertised for a nanny, you see, and there were a whole bunch of old farts lined up at our door. Then this Yvette girl shows up, and you should see her.

An honest gal, with a pleasant face, lips a trifle protruding, soft-mannered and helpful... Got a good round head, such as one likes to see on the shoulders of a friend. Reddest hair you've ever seen, and big, brown eyes... Quite a sight, especially when you pair all that with a good set of gams and that flowery accent.

I, being the keen-eyed fellow that I am, saw right away that it was an act.

As soon as Rick and Evy turn their backs, she's a pompous little chunk of lead. I try to be friendly— keep the peace and all— and she gives me the cold shoulder. The nerve, I tell you! Nasty girl.

I should have trusted my gut instinct, because now I can't come home from the pub without a dirty glare.

It's my house, damn it! (Well, technically it's Evy and Rick's house, but I live here, and I am her superior.) I should not be made to feel bad about every single thing I do.

I ask for a cup of tea? She looks at me like I'm some sort of ogre. I compliment her clothes? She scowls at me. I invite her out for a night on the town? She repeatedly turns down my offers! Utter rudeness.

Believe you me, the second she slips up, I'm having her fired. She's probably stealing from us. And she seems to be good with little Alex, but for all we know she could be a lunatic who force-feeds him frogs' legs and cognac.

Evy doesn't believe me, of course.

Truthfully, I think the only reason she even hired Yvette is because she spent the last part of her pregnancy reading 'Around the World in Eighty Days', and one of the main characters in it is some kind of Frenchman.

But despite Rick and Evy's bad decisions regarding nannies, I am keeping my perspectives on the level.

Speaking of silly decisions— what do you think about the new Romanian king? I read about the whole fiasco in the paper. Old sap dies, and his five-year-old grandson is put in charge of an entire country!

Bloody Romanians. I certainly can't imagine Alexander O'Connell being crowned king at age five, and he's a bright baby.

At the moment, I'm trying to teach him to talk, but Evy says he can't start repeating me yet. (He's three months old, for God's sake. Shouldn't he be jabbering away by now?)

I fear that he'll end up with a French accent, however, and so I'm making sure to teach him very English phrases. 'Bangers and mash' is his favourite term so far, and I'll be damned if that's French in any way.

Anyway, I trust all is well with you.

I'm sure you know that King Fuad is over here at the moment. Maybe you should follow your monarch's example and get your arse over here for a visit? He seems to have brought the good weather with him, as well, and it's rather sunny.

If the weather keeps, I might head down to the beach next week. Stroll along the prom, listen to the brass bands, enjoy the fact that there aren't any crocodiles in the British waters...

Stay safe, Sweetheart.

Cheerio,

Jon.


	8. The Excavation

**CHAPTER 6**

**"The Excavation"**

As usual, the world's hottest desert was living up to its name.

The Sahara, millions of square feet of sand stretching from the Red Sea to the belt of tropical savanna known as the Sahel, was scorched beneath the scalding rays of the sun.

The al-Fayoum Oasis, Egypt's largest, was sixty-two miles southwest of Cairo and a rare source of water within the unforgiving desert; today the small cluster of Pharaonic and Ptolemaic ruins that neighboured this oasis were disturbed by a full-scale archaeological excavation.

The air was polluted with the noise of truck engines and rowdy diggers, tents being assembled and shovels hitting the dusty earth.

The entirely unimportant-looking ruins of a nameless temple were today the most important thing in the world in the eyes of Pyrrah, who had found the smattering of broken bricks and crumbling pillars with the careful instructions in Terence's journal.

That journal never left her side. It was tucked under her arm as she watched the workers organise themselves from the shade of a small tent, along with a precise list of people involved in the excavation today.

"_Good morning, Miss. Ananka!_" a cheery voice called from the back of her tent, words spoken in Arabic. "_How is everything at this end?_"

Perry turned to smile at Sherif Abd el-Aziz, the other co-field supervisor of her team. Sherif was a tall Egyptian man with a moustache, probably nearing fifty. A kindly smile never left his face, and she had found him to be the most likeable person in Marina Quatermain's employ.

"_Everything is well. But we have not yet found any points of entry to the temple's underground._" she replied, waving a hand at the scene before them.

Sherif stopped at her side and put his hands on his hips. He observed the workers with an air of disinterest, as if he was staring straight through them.

"_I was told we are looking for a chest,_" he said.

"_Yes._"

She felt his eyes slip sideways to her.

"_And what might this chest contain, my dear?_"

Somebody dropped something behind them, and it clattered loudly. Perry smiled.

"Things that must be taken care of." she told him, in English. Her answer was final, as was made clear with a pointed look.

Sherif laughed quietly, and clamped a big hand onto her shoulder.

"I won't ask any more questions, then," he said. "Except for one."

She looked back up at him. He leaned in close to her and pointed out to the west end of the site, drawing her eyeline to a flustered young woman who weaved between tents with obvious confusion.

"Who is that girl?"

Perry squinted, and then pulled out her list of workers' names.

_Project Director: Dr. Nolan Bunbury_

_Associate Director: Dr. Glen Jeffrys_

_Archaeozoologist: Dr. Sabine Lallier_

_Co-Field Director: Pyrrah Ananka_

_Co-Field Director: Sherif Abd el-Aziz_

_Area Supervisor: Osama Helmi_

_Lead Ceramicist: Mahmoud Kamel_

_Objects Registrar: Nagwan Ibrahim_

_Sponsor: Ms. Meela Nais_

A list of Meela's three security guards and thirty-or-so diggers followed, but she already knew every man by name.

Sherif was correct; this girl had no place here.

"Excuse me!"

Perry swept over to the young woman, a frantic swishing of black robes against the glaringly bright floor. Sherif followed at a distance, amused but not nearly as concerned as the woman ahead of him.

"Can I help you, young lady?"

The girl couldn't have been older than twenty. She was tall, white and skinny, and a thicket of brown curls were bunched messily at the back of her head. Her skin was badly sunburnt in places, and the woolen cardigan she wore did nothing to conceal the fact.

"Oh, uh, yeah," she said, looking from left to right in confusion. "My name's Emmy Witsell. I'm from Marshall College? In Connecticut?"

Perry looked down to her list again, if only to hide the lost look that followed her mentioning of the word 'Connecticut'.

_Connecticut? Is that an American place? She has an American accent. It's American. Isn't it? Connecticut..._

"You're a student, then?" she asked, to cover her confusion.

Emmy nodded, and glanced down self-consciously at her clothes, like their head-to-toe yellowness had somehow given away her age.

"Yes. I'm shadowing Dr. Lallier—"

"Emmy! There you are. What are you doing talking to these people?"

As if the utterance of her name was an incantation that sparked the curse to summon her, Sabine Lallier appeared. Stalking towards them with great purpose, she was flanked by Dr. Jeffrys and Dr. Bunbury.

Emmy Witsell stared at her shoes nervously when Lallier reached her side.

Sabine Lallier was a human skeleton, older than she looked and carrying an undeserved sense of sanctimony in her aura.

She glared down at the world over a witch's hooked nose, and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses magnified her angry, beady eyes.

"I got lost—"

"Lost? Are you daft, girl? This is the smallest site I've ever worked on, and you're _lost?"_ Lallier demanded of the poor student.

"Actually, I was registering her as an attendee of the site." Perry said, holding her list in the air.

Dr. Lallier snapped her gaze to her in instant fury.

"Is that so?" she asked. She looked the Muslim woman up and down with loathing, like everything from her list to her hijab was vulgar. Sherif, at her side, received the same treatment.

"There's no need to be so harsh." he said, offering the woman a smile.

Lallier upturned her nose at them. Beside her, Dr. Jeffrys snorted.

"I think we all have a right mind to be aggravated," he said, soft southern American accent as patronising as they came. He surely thought himself a reincarnation of Mark Twain. "You've dragged us here on short notice to find what? Some unnamed artefact that'll do nobody no good?"

Sherif kept his smile steady.

"I should think any archaeologist would find great delight in visiting the ruins by al-Fayoum."

Jeffrys didn't respond to that. Lallier grabbed Emmy roughly by a shoulder and pushed her in the direction of their tent.

Perry was hoping they'd leave quietly and go back to their business. But then Dr. Bunbury cleared his throat, and that wish was as good as lost.

"It is unfair, you know," he sighed, taking a step towards them. "I've had only a day to cancel my other engagements. Now I've been here for five hours, and I'm wondering why I bothered at all."

Nolan Bunbury was British, from somewhere northerly in England.

Where Jeffrys was stout and white-haired and dressed in white dinner suits, and Lallier was tall and grey-haired and dressed in grey pinafores, Bunbury was a young, striking, colourful man.

His hair was auburn, and his clothes were always the deep colours of moss or plums or blue peacock's feathers. He always wore a set of round, wire rimmed spectacles (not entirely different to ones once owned by Bernard Burns), and he had a handsome slyness about him that might have attracted the likes of Meela Nais.

And Perry hated him. She despised every inch of him.

Bunbury was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and had since grown to become the most materialistic, arrogant, manipulative, morally backwards and intellectually incompetent individual she had ever met.

The man knew nothing of his craft, but wealth superseded the passion needed to become successful in the archaeological field.

He treated everybody around him like dirt. Yet, his entire life, he had been told he was holier-than-thou. Nolan Bunbury believed he was the greatest gift to grace God's earth.

"_And we are wondering why nobody has bothered to stab you, yet..."_ Sherif mumbled in Arabic, causing Perry's mouth to twitch.

Nolan gave them both an icy stare.

"Don't talk in that alien language in front of an Englishman," he ordered. "Speak the King's English in my presence. My people own your country, and I shan't let you forget it."

Sherif's smile disappeared.

Bunbury folded his hands behind his back, and looked to Perry.

"As the project director, however, I owe it to the Egyptian Excavation Society to try and whip this dig into shape. The site is secure, everything's set up. What's holding us back?"

Perry cleared her throat and glanced at Sherif before answering him. She didn't like talking to Nolan, not at all, not ever.

What was it he had called her in the Shepheard's Hotel, yesterday? Sandy. That was it. _Sandy._

She really ought to have Ardeth slice the man's head off.

"We can't find a point of entry to the temple's underground, Dr. Bunbury," she answered. "I believe we would if we carefully searched the more eastern side—"

Nolan shook his head before she even completed her suggestion, and rubbed his temples in sudden frustration.

"No, no, I think you'll find the eastern side is where the Holy of Holies is located."

Perry resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

"In the case of the Temple of Luxor, yes," she said. "But this temple is entirely different. Most of it is below ground, which says a lot in itself, and if you think back to the Temple of Dendara when—"

"Dendara's east side had the birth house of Mammisi, yes, yes, we all know," Bunbury spat. "What good does the reminder of _that_ do us?"

The archaeologist clucked his tongue against his cheek in the silence that followed, an act that irritated Perry to the point of flying off the handle. She sucked in a breath, ready to shout about how wrong he was in absolutely everything he said, but another interjecting voice managed to stop her.

"We will dig on the eastern side of the site."

Five heads turned to see Meela Nais approach them, smiling cattily at Dr. Bunbury in a deliberately condescending manner. Lock-Nah was at her side, as massive and brooding as ever.

Bunbury ignored him, though, likely to avoid collapsing in fear. He just cocked an eyebrow at the gorgeous Egyptian millionaire that strode so coolly to their grouping.

"And what makes you think you have any authority here, Miss. Nais?" he asked.

Meela looked at him with a sort of pity.

"Why, I am funding this excavation, remember?"

Bunbury snorted, and looked to his left and right in hopes of sharing a scoff with Lallier and Jeffrys.

"The Egyptian Excavation Society—"

"Who do you think funds the Egyptian Excavation Society?" she interrupted, calmly. Bunbury's face fell. "Money is the root of everything, Dr. Bunbury, and you'll be surprised how far mine has travelled."

Nolan didn't say anything else. He pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose, defeated by the woman in the lacy, black dress.

Meela raised her eyebrows.

"Go on. You are archaeologists, no? Go and dig on the eastern side."

Lallier was the first to storm off, utterly outraged with the fact that they had to do what this lady said or their careers would face dire consequences. Jeffrys followed, and then Bunbury, and the terrible trio of project directors were soon ordering their diggers to head over to the eastern side of the site.

Meela turned to Perry and Sherif, with a cheeky smile and twinkling eyes.

"We do as Pyrrah says on this dig."

* * *

A door was uncovered as the sun began to set.

It wasn't really a door, nor something that would have caught the eye of many.

A stone slab in the ground was stumbled upon when Nolan Bunbury grew tired and angry, and barked random orders at a handful of poor diggers. A man named Rasha had been ordered to sweep the dust away from the archaeologist's toolkits, and that was when the outline of the door became accidentally clear.

It took sixteen men to heave the massive block out of the ground, but what they discovered beneath it was well worth the physical exertion.

"Get me a torch!" Meela called, snapping her fingers at the excited crowd of workers.

She immediately passed said flaming torch to Lock-Nah, who edged closer to the lightless hole in the ground.

A few crumbling steps were visibly sloping from the surface to the darkness; from the drop-off rate, one might have thought they ended there and led only to the bowels of the underworld.

Nobody said a word as he took the first step. Perry followed he and Meela with wide, nervous eyes; according to Terence Bey, whatever lay beneath their feet was the home of the Scrolls of Thebes, and had been for thousands of years.

They carefully descended the lengthy set of eroded steps, Meela somehow managing to balance on the decaying stone in her high heels.

What Lock-Nah's torch illuminated once they reached the bottom made everybody gasp.

"I thought this was supposed to be a small temple?" Meela questioned, looking with marvel at the room before them.

Behind them, Sherif called for more torches to be sent down, and Perry quickly took one to examine what she had seen.

This underground temple, as it turned out, was enormous. Twin sets of stairs descended from either side of their floor, and it became clear that the steps from the entrance were a short flight leading only to a mere veranda.

The platform they stood on overlooked a grand, cavernous hall, where careful architecture met raw earthly substance; giant pillars met the stalactites that jutted from the ceiling, and the remnants of tributary monuments to ancient deities sat shadowed in the corners of the ground floor.

Small doors and blackened holes lined the walls like tunnels in a beehive, perhaps once for offerings and sacrifices to be left in, perhaps leading into a vast entanglement of temple passageways.

"It was," Perry said, her voice echoing dramatically in the wide, dark space. "It's unnamed, I supposed it was only used for worship by locals at a time..."

"Well, you were clearly very wrong." Nolan Bunbury declared spitefully, waving his torch around to emphasise his point.

Perry stepped further towards the broken bannister that lined the edge of their balcony, peering over at the massive chamber with fascination. In the very centre of the floor, an altar of sorts rose from ground level. It had been shaded at one time by a concrete pavilion, but now that had collapsed on top of it and a heap of broken stone lay in pieces in its place.

Excited by the concept of what lay beneath the wreckage of this altar, Perry decided to descend one of the sets of steps. Meela got the same idea, and Lock-Nah followed her down to the bottom floor.

"So what was the use of such a massive temple?" the millionaire called out. "And why has nobody found this yet?"

Perry's torchlight passed over faded hieroglyphics that were crudely carved into the uneven, dusty walls. The entire area reminded her of Hamunaptra— a deadened, quiet version of Hamunaptra, with less Pharaonic gold and dark glamour behind it.

"I shall speak to the al-Fayoum locals tomorrow, see if they know anything of this place. Perhaps it is avoided deliberately." Sherif said, and Perry became aware that everybody else was venturing down the stairs as well.

"What does Osama have to say?" she asked him, stopping and turning around in confusion.

Osama Helmi, the al-Fayoum area supervisor she had been introduced to early that morning, should have been giving his advice right about now.

Sherif glanced back at the hole in the roof grimly.

"He will not venture down here. He left the site as soon as we opened the door."

Perry drew a breath and continued back down the stairs.

_How ominous. The area supervisor flees the area..._

Pushing thoughts of curses, scarab beetles, dead prison wardens and pressurised salt acid to the back of her mind, she reached the broken altar and eyed its wreckage eagerly.

"To answer your other question, Meela," Perry said, running her fingers along one particular chunk of stone. "I believe this temple was dedicated to the worship of Thoth."

Beneath the collapsed pavilion, the stone head of an ibis stared up at the visitors, harshly detached from its hefty human body.

"Thoth?" Meela repeated.

Perry smiled, and noticed that the monuments in the corners of the room represented Seshat, Ma'at, Shu and Tefnut— Thoth's female counterpart, his wife, his mother and his father.

_It makes sense,_ she thought, _that the wise god of writing should be the guardian of the Scrolls of Thebes._

She looked around at the mass of passageways embedded into the walls.

"We have a lot of searching to do," she told everybody. "But we will not stay down here past sundown."

Lock-Nah, of all people, was the first to question that statement.

"Why not past sundown?" he asked, frown deep-set, voice low and annoyed.

Perry held her torch a little higher, to gaze up at the sharp shadows cast by the stalactites.

"In my experience, bad things happen when it gets dark."


	9. The Scrolls

**CHAPTER 7**

**"The Scrolls"**

Perry couldn't sleep.

It had been under her order that the camp settled down at nightfall, yet she was itching to head back down to the underground temple.

The night was noisy; the diggers, whose small tents lined the eastern side of the site, kept the desert alive with a ruckus of rowdy laughter and skolia-like songs of jest.

The oh-so-sensible archaeologists in the big tents on the west side were as quiet as mice, but that didn't make a difference to Perry.

Not being able to hear herself think was actually a slight relief, since her thoughts were every which way tonight.

If she wasn't thinking about those scrolls, she was thinking about Ardeth.

_Come back to my tribe with me. Tonight._

She thought about how urgent that had seemed, and the uneasiness she was left with after their meeting only grew worse as time went by. She couldn't help but feel that she had missed something, that she had failed to piece together the parts of what he had said.

Before the abrupt invitation, he had told her about the Council electing him chieftain of all twelve Medjai tribes.

How did that correlate to her visiting his tribe?

Perry sighed and sat up in her bedroll, rubbing her eyes with exhaustion. She lit her kerosene lantern and opened Terence's journal, hoping that its writings would tire her mind a bit.

_'After sneaking to Emperor Memnon's camp, Mathayus found that the dark sorcerer he sought was actually a beautiful sorceress named Cassandra,'_ Terence wrote, of the Scorpion King's story. _'After a betrayal by King Pheron's son Takmet, Jesup and Rama were killed, and Memnon himself prepared to kill Mathayus. Cassandra protested his death, however, claiming—'_

"Miss. Ananka."

Perry looked up from the journal with a frown.

_Why I am always interrupted from this story?_

The voice, a deep, dark one belonging to a man, had come from outside her tent door.

"Who is it?" she asked.

She was hardly in any position to be dealing with people right now. Her hair was uncovered and loose, and the nightgown she wore was hardly as modest as her tunic and robes.

"Lock-Nah."

She should have recognised his voice before.

"Can I help you?" she called back, reaching for her bag to find a shawl of some sort. His answer didn't come as a shock.

"Ms. Nais wants to see you."

Meela's tent was the biggest of all, sitting on higher ground than the others so she could overlook the entire site like a queen. Light glowed softly through its fabric walls as Perry followed Lock-Nah through the sand of al-Fayoum, doing her best to keep up with the big man's walking pace.

One of the red-robed guards stood by the entrance, and she assumed the other was around the back.

"Pyrrah, darling, come in."

The inside was better furnished than Perry's house, let alone the rest of the tents. Meela was lounging on a settee, a glass of wine in one hand and a _Vogue_ magazine at the fingertips of the other.

A four-poster bed— not the one from her Cairo mansion, as was noted— lay in the back corner, and a desk, small dining table and wooden trunk were also dotted around the tent. Everything seemed to be draped with pillows and throws of silk and satin, so rich in colour when compared to Meela's elegant but aphotic wardrobe.

"How can I help, Meela?" Perry asked her, trying not to seem too awed by the woman's flamboyance.

Meela smiled, and gestured to the armchair opposite her, where her guest willingly took a seat.

"I want to talk to you about something," she said, dragging the pages of her magazine shut and setting her wine down on the coffee table between them.

Lock-Nah disappeared through the entrance when Meela cast him a look, and so they were left alone.

"Is there a problem?" Perry asked.

Meela shook her head, and looked her in the eyes with an expression too serious to hold the feline-like amusement it usually did.

"I want you to tell me about the Book of the Dead."

Perry folded her hands on her lap and looked down at the floor.

"I don't—"

"Don't give me any excuses," Meela said, suddenly, but covered the heat of the remark with her famed smile. "Everybody in the archaeological field knows that four people left that expedition alive. Rick O'Connell, Evelyn Carnahan, Jonathan Carnahan and his little assistant. And only one of them is still in Egypt."

_Not true,_ Perry thought. _Ardeth and Beni are just good at lying low._

She looked up at the other lady and frowned. Meela's eyes were searching for something, as if they might look through to her soul and find a long sought-after answer.

"The famous ones can't be pestered quite so much in England, where nobody knows what really happened," she said, calmly sitting up straight on the settee. "But you are a different story. Aren't you?"

Perry sighed, and decided that she didn't like where this conversation was heading.

"Do you know what happened to Hamunaptra, Meela?" she asked the woman, with a raised eyebrow.

Meela answered without a second thought, but a twinge of resentment seemed to cross her beautiful face.

"It sunk."

Perry nodded and rose from her seat. She stared down at the other lady with a false smile, one that did little to hide her dislike of the topic's nature.

"And with it, the Book of the Dead. Goodnight, Meela."

Leaving the lavishly decorated tent without another word, Perry found herself unable to sleep soundly that night on account of yet another thing.

She may have just crossed Meela Nais.

* * *

"So, what is Thoth, exactly?"

Deep within a tunnel that stemmed from the underground temple's bottommost floor, Emmy Witsell was asking Perry a million and one questions.

Perry dragged some cobwebs out of their path with the tip of her torch.

"The God of Wisdom, inventor of writing, patron of scribes and the divine mediator," she replied, with a short laugh. "I thought you would have known that."

Emmy tripped over a rock and fell into the tunnel wall, shrugging away from the dust and spiderwebs with disgust at whatever substances they may have left on her cream shirt.

"No, see, I'm studying to become an archaeologist, not an Egyptologist in particular," she said. "Forgive me, but I'm actually more interested in Nordic mythology."

Perry shrugged.

"Well, I can't blame you. Scandinavian mythology is fascinating in its own right."

The young girl hummed, and they journeyed on in silence.

The tunnel Perry had chosen was directly behind the temple's centre altar, and they had been following its path for several minutes, now. It was a dark, cramped, cold space, but she refused to let claustrophobia get the better of her.

A childhood trauma had cost her her best friend and a decade's worth of memories; she wasn't going to let it rob her of anything else, and it certainly wasn't going to stump her search for the Scrolls of Thebes.

"So what is he?" Emmy was suddenly asking.

Perry glanced over her shoulder to remind herself that the girl was actually there.

"Who?"

"Thoth."

"Oh. Thoth has the head of an ibis, if that's what you mean. But sometimes it's a baboon." she answered.

In the distance, there was a loud thud, and then an English accent yelled something in a very hostile tone. Dr. Bunbury was in a particularly bad mood today, as Meela had assigned him the task of investigating the highest rows of tunnels embedded in the room's walls.

Unfortunately for him, they were at least fifty feet above the ground, and scaffolding and ladders weren't easy to assemble when your equipment was above ground and your workers didn't speak much English.

Perry smirked to herself at the faint sound of his frustration. Jeffrys, Lallier, even Sherif— they had all pulled the short straw, whereas she got first pick in choosing her area of focus.

Naturally, the tunnels closest to the altar and monuments were her choices; this one was the fifth she and Emmy had searched that day, but so far it wasn't looking particularly unique.

"Is he married?" Emmy asked, and then tripped over another rock and bashed into the tunnel wall once again.

And that was when something caught Perry's eye.

"Oh, shoot," Emmy groaned, licking her finger to try and clean the grime off of her sleeve. "I'm gonna be black and blue and covered in— hey, what are you looking at?"

Where Emmy's torch had bashed against the wall and illuminated its tiniest cracks and crevices, a single, carefully carved hieroglyph had caught Perry's attention.

The Eye of Horus.

"Ugh. So, is he married?"

Perry frowned, and jerked her attention away from the symbol.

"What? Who?"

"Thoth."

Emmy was waiting for the answer like a toddler waiting for a biscuit.

"That's not important right now, Emmy," Perry whispered. She pointed to the eye in the wall. "Do you know what this is?"

Emmy squinted at it.

"An eye?"

Perry grinned.

"The Wadjet. The Eye of Horus," she said, and stared up at it with a kind of admiration. "The Ancient Egyptian symbol of protection, royal power and good health."

Emmy tilted her head, as if trying to see what she saw in the eye, and then grew bored.

"Who's Horus? Is he the boss?"

Perry sighed exasperatedly. Things were going to move fast now, and this girl needed to stop being so slow.

"No. Um... Did Thor have a son?" she asked, shaking her head at this ridiculous last resort.

Emmy thought about it.

"Yeah, Magni. And—"

"Well, if you think of Ra like Odin, and Seth like Loki, and Osiris like Thor, then Horus would be Magni," Perry snapped. "Except... technically, Geb would be Odin... And Horus is much, much more powerful than any Norse god."

Emmy looked down at the floor, as if absorbing the information. Perhaps she was contemplating whether or not to be insulted by her claim that Egyptian gods were much stronger than Norse ones.

Perry reached up and tapped the Wadjet.

"This eye protects things. Which means there must be something in this tunnel for it to protect."

They ventured on, slowly now, taking time to scan every inch of wall with their torchlight. There was another Wadjet, and another, and soon blocks of hieroglyphs were drawn into entire storyboards behind the dust and sand.

_This is it, _Perry thought to herself. _This is the right tunnel._

Her heart was pounding in her chest. Terence had been correct.

"I think I see a dead end," Emmy whispered, and Perry stuck an arm out to make them both stop moving.

Sure enough, there was a wall up ahead. They could see where the darkness gathered in its corners, and where cobwebs had been so thickly spun over the man-sized depiction of Thoth in its stone.

"There," Perry whispered, and pointed to the ankh this engraving of Thoth held. The ankh jutted out from the wall an inch or so, designed all along to be pushed inwards. "Hold my torch."

Emmy held the torches close and steady as Perry crouched at the base of the wall, tracing her fingers along the tiny hieroglyphics that were intricately laid by the deity's feet.

"No warnings of pressurised salt acid," she mumbled. "No curses. No restrictions. Just blessings."

Emmy watched with wide eyes as Perry got to her feet again and rested her hand over the ankh. She pushed.

There was no sound at first, and then the low, grinding noise of stone scraping against stone became audible.

Perry held her breath. In a similar (but accidental) movement she had sunk Hamunaptra singlehandedly, and almost killed her friends in the progress. Ardeth would be beyond angry if he found she was still pushing buttons and pulling levers without hesitation.

But the ground didn't shake this time. No rocks or rubble fell from the ceiling, no roofs began to cave. There was a low, popping sound that echoed straight through the tunnel, and then silence.

"There!" Emmy said.

Perry looked down.

The section of wall below Thoth's feet had inched forward, looking quite the way a desk drawer did when it wasn't properly closed.

Both women dropped to their knees and dig their fingers behind its opening, heaving with all their strength to will this stone 'drawer' out of its age-old home.

"Almost there—"

They dragged it right out, and Emmy fell onto her backside due to the suddenness of the motion. She scrambled to her knees, picked up her torch, and they both peered into the drawer at the end of the tunnel.

Within it, there was a chest. The very chest Perry had told everybody they were looking for, the chest that Terence Bey had drawn in his precious journal.

There wasn't a scratch on the wood, but a large eye of Horus was carved into its lid.

"Ya Salam..." she whispered, as she clicked the chest open.

Inside it lay three papyrus scrolls.

_The Scrolls of Thebes._

She slammed the lid shut.

"Why'd you shut it? What were them things?" Emmy asked, but Perry hushed her. She shook her head frantically, practically on the edge of hysteria. She was smiling madly, but her heart was in her throat and the worst sort of fear had seized her.

She slid the stone drawer shut, but not so much so that they couldn't open it again later.

"Emmy," she said, and took the young girl by the shoulders. "We just found what this entire expedition was aimed toward finding."

Emmy beamed, and exclaimed,

"Seriously? That's great!"

"Shhhh!" Perry hissed. Emmy clamped her mouth shut guiltily, and they both cast a pointless look of concern down the tunnel.

Perry looked her young, American friend in the eyes, bearing a look so solemn and speaking with a tone so grave that it would have made Ardeth proud.

"Emmy," she began. "You have to promise me that you'll tell nobody of our discovery. Let nobody know that this chest is here."

Emmy Witsell nodded, slowly, in understanding.

Perry bit her lip, and thought back to what Ardeth had told her.

_My men and I will be travelling north, starting tomorrow. Once we reach Tanta, I will head back to my tribe and send some people to oversee the rest of your excavation._

He had left for Tanta the day before yesterday, and so he would probably reach he city today or tomorrow. But how long from Tanta to his tribe? How long before the Medjai reached al-Fayoum?

"We have to keep it a secret for four days," Perry told her, decisively. "If my friends do not get here by that time, we will head back to Cairo to hide this chest."

Emmy's eyes became wide and puzzled.

"Back to Cairo?" she asked, growing skeptical. "I don't understand what's going on, here, Pyrrah..."

Perry shook her shoulders a little.

"Please. You _have_ to keep it a secret."

Emmy nodded one last time, and then Perry decided to get them back to the camp.

A terrible, anxious feeling told her that keeping this a secret would be easier said than done, though, especially with the likes of scatterbrained Emmy Witsell involved in the situation.

And if Terence Bey was right in all of his hunches, then now was the most dangerous part of her mission— because some very bad people wanted to get their hands on the Scrolls of Thebes.


	10. The Breach

**CHAPTER 8**

**"The Breach"**

"Maybe he likes being a bachelor," Jonathan said. "Like me."

Perry frowned.

"What?"

"Thoth. Old boy's not married, is he?"

They were stood in the library in the Museum of Antiquities, and the shelves were toppled over again. Books were all over the floor, and it was nighttime, and Perry was finding it very hard to concentrate.

She shook her head at Jonathan, who was holding an open bottle of Glenlivet.

"He _is_ married," she snapped, unable to understand why he didn't know that.

"Well, why didn't you say so?"

Jonathan raised his eyebrows at her accusatorially, and took a swig from his bottle. The cream suit he wore was creased and dusty, but his hair was in perfect place.

"But she _did _say so," Terence said. "Didn't you, Pyrrah? You _did _talk about Ma'at."

The Curator was stood near Jonathan, hands folded properly behind his back, an earnest look on his face.

Perry didn't know the answer.

"Yes, I did." Perhaps that was a lie.

_It doesn't feel like a lie._

"Good," Evy said. "Otherwise the scales in Duat wouldn't be even."

Evy was behind Perry, and she found herself turning around to look at the librarian. Yes, she was still a librarian— hair in a bun, reading glasses on the end of her nose, three scrolls in her arms.

"You wouldn't want to mess up the Equilibrium now, would you, sweetheart?" Jonathan asked her. His voice seemed further away, like it was rippling.

She struggled to hear him, but her eyes were trained on the scrolls in Evy's possession.

"What are they?" she asked Evelyn.

Evy smiled.

"They're very important." she said, happily but matter-of-factly. "If I drop them, I'll scream."

From somewhere else in the museum— maybe the roof, maybe the foyer, maybe the hall farthest away— a scream pierced the air. A girl's scream.

Evy's smile turned sad, and she sighed wistfully at the scrolls.

"See," Jonathan's rippling, echoing voice pointed out. "She'll scream."

Perry shook her head. The ceiling was beginning to move, and so was the floor beneath her feet. Something was wrong.

"But that's not Evy screaming," she managed to say.

She felt herself spinning, falling. There was another scream, and then a short burst of terrorized shrieks.

"Oh, but it is, my dear," Terence told her. "It is."

The screams stopped.

Perry's eyes slammed open.

She sat up in her bedroll, shaken and disorientated by the strange dream. She placed a hand over her quickening heart and sighed in relief, blinking past the darkness to try and find her bearings.

It took her a moment to realize that something in the air was rotten. Everything was too quiet; the rowdy diggers' chants were absent, and the night was too still.

When she had gone to bed at midnight they had just been beginning their evening, and it couldn't have been too long since that time: the sun rose at five o'clock, and everything was still pitch black.

Perry felt around in the dark for her bag and lamp, but she froze when a shrill scream exploded in the distance.

It was identical to the screams in her dream.

She didn't move a muscle, eyes wide in the absence of light, waiting to hear if she had imagined it.

A man's voice barked something in the same direction, and his tone was all she needed to conclude that something was incredibly wrong tonight.

She crawled to the door of her tent and peeked outside. Daylight wasn't even beginning to show, but the black silhouettes of moving people were visible on the indigo skyline.

There were men and horses between the tents on the east side, and the low rumbling of truck engines was clear.

"Nais is in the truck. Put Ananka, Bunbury and the others in with her. Hurry. And silence the rest."

A deep, masculine voice startled her. It was close by, right behind her tent, and the man to whom it belonged obviously wasn't alone. Perry scooted back inside, staying as quiet as possible so as to not draw anybody's attention.

Who was that? Was it... Lock-Nah? No. Lock-Nah was a member of Meela's security team. By the sounds of things, though, that security had fallen short; the millionaire clearly wasn't in the safest hands, and Perry wasn't willing to bet that any of the other archaeologists were, either.

Men's feet padded quietly along the edge of her tent. She held her breath. If she had still been sleeping, she'd be completely unaware of the present danger.

Perry grabbed her handbag, crawled to the back of the tent, and slipped out before that uninvited visitor could find her.

Out here, more silhouetted figures of men were patrolling the site, roaming between the tents and forcing her to keep low and remain in the shadowy areas untouched by moonlight.

Meela's tent was still aglow on top of the sloping land, but she decided to steer clear of it.

_Why are these people here?_ she thought, watching the trucks shift around, listening to men shout at each other in the dark. _Do they know about the scrolls?_

It certainly made sense. Terence wrote that those in pursuit of the Scrolls of Thebes were in great number, and were very good at working their way into all kinds of organisations unnoticed. Could it be possible that there was a traitor at the site? Perhaps those red-robed men were working for a more sinister faction...

Was this the work of The Cult, as Terence referred to them?

_I have to find Emmy Witsell,_ Perry thought. _She's the only other one who might give away the location of the scrolls._

Dr. Lallier's tent, which Emmy was staying in for the time being, was at the end of the front row of the west tents, so she had to travel a considerable distance in haste while keeping quiet and remaining unseen.

Luckily, the men— whose appearances were entirely masked by the night, leaving them only burly shadows with a harsh stomp— had lost whatever interest previously had them occupy the west camp grounds, and all were ordered to migrate to the temple's entrance.

Perry watched them, dark and menacing but stealthy with ease, flock in pairs or trios to the door in the ground. They knew about the scrolls. And they were going to retrieve them.

For her to try and singlehandedly stop them would surely result in capture or death; the silver glint of the metal sword blades that hung at the side of each man was unmistakable, and none of them had the slight stature that belonged to the likes of Beni Gabor.

No, these were soldiers of a sort. And it wouldn't be long before they realised she wasn't 'in the truck'.

Perry dipped into Lallier's tent and, immediately, her foot hit something solid and she tripped. On all fours again, her left knee was pushing into something soft, maybe a bedroll.

"Emmy?" she whispered. "Dr. Lallier? Are you there?"

There was a metallic smell in the air, but Perry ignored it and used her hands to scope out her surroundings.

"Emmy?" she asked again.

She turned around to get a feel of the object she had tripped on. Her fingers pressed against some soft material, an item of strange texture hidden beneath it. The object was large, and it was only when her hands wandered upwards and hit skin that she realised she was touching a human body.

She froze in horror. A gentle heat was radiating from the flesh, but there was no movement, no breathing.

_Who is this?!_

She had never intended to create light, as it might compromise her hiding, but that rule went to the dogs as she fumbled around in her bag for a matchbox.

Striking the match against something wooden nearby, she guided the small flame with shaking hands over to the face of the corpse.

It was Dr. Lallier.

The wrinkly skin of her face had been splattered with blood, and after further inspection Perry found the source of the crimson liquid. There was a gaping wound in her chest, likely caused by the sword of one of those men, and her grey gown was soaked in the bodily fluid.

Forcing herself to refrain from dropping the match, she used it to get a better picture of the tent. The entire place was a wreck, but the small area that Emmy had slept in was in particular disorder.

There was blood on the student's bed sheets, and in the faint glow of her match, Perry could follow speckles of it to the other end of the tent.

Following the trail, the adrenaline of fear making her common sense hard to retain, she found that it led out of Lallier's tent and across to the neighboring one.

"Emmy?"

The blood speckles were larger now, more like pools, and through the sand there had been prints from hands and knees. Jeffrys' tent was in the same ransacked state as his colleague's, but this time there was two bodies within it instead of one.

There was a cough and a gargling noise, a gasp for air drowned undoubtedly by blood.

"Emmy?"

Dr. Jeffrys' bloated body was facedown in the entryway, and the disarrayed fluff of white hair atop his head was now red with death.

"P-Pyr—"

A foot or so away from it, Emmy Witsell's gangly form trembled in agony.

The light of Perry's match was inconsistent, but between flickers of amber light she found that sunny yellow nightgown.

"Emmy!"

Perry crawled to her side, her free hand soon finding Emmy's, which reached out at her in a frantic attempt to grasp safety. Large patches of her gown were orange with blood, and the liquid pooled into a sticky blackness near the open gash in her chest.

"P-Py—" she tried to inhale, but choked and gargled on the fluid again.

"Shh," Perry told her, keeping the match close to her face as she wiped the sweat from her brow. "It's okay, Emmy, don't try to talk."

Tears were streaming down Emmy's pale face, and her body was practically vibrating in the pain.

The girl turned her head to the side and choked up some blood, a generous amount of which dribbled messily onto Jeffrys' floor. She turned back to Perry, who wasn't going to let herself cry.

"Everybody's dead," she whispered, her voice jarring at every new syllable. She was obviously struggling to keep her eyes focused, and they jutted around in her skull like they were trying desperately to roll backwards.

However weak she might have seemed, though, her grip on Perry's hand was rigid, as if the woman crouched before her was the essence of life itself.

Emmy paused, her shallow, shaking breaths the only sound in the world.

"I'm cold."

Both of Perry's hands were taken, so she couldn't wipe away the tears that spilled down the girl's cheeks.

Knowing the end was near for poor Emmy, she put on a smile for her.

"Everything is going to be alright, Emmy," she told her. "You are a good girl, a very good girl. Soon you will be in Jannah."

Emmy's eyelids fluttered, and her eyes lolled to the side. She coughed again, and another dribble of blood ran down from the corner of her mouth.

"Jannah?" she managed to croak.

Perry glanced down at the wound in her chest.

"Paradise," she said, making sure to smile. "In a minute, all this pain will go away, and you will meet angels, who will bring you peace. 'Now how excellent is the final home', they say."

Emmy gave a shudder, and swallowed the liquid in her throat so as to breath for a moment longer.

"I'm scared," she whispered, staring up at the dark ceiling of the tent, where the match's light didn't reach.

Her fingers had lost their iron grip on Perry's hand. She was weakening.

"Everything is going to be alright, Emmy."

Her pupils contracted and her eyes stilled, and it was clear the girl wasn't seeing anything anymore. She wheezed and choked on the blood in her esophagus once more, and then stopped trembling.

It was like a wave of peace had swept over her. Her tormented body slept at last, and the final breath escaped her with only a slight struggle. Her head dropped to the side, and her fingers slipped from Perry's hand.

Emmy Witsell was gone.

Perry blew out the match, and allowed herself to cry as quietly as was possible. She kissed Emmy's forehead, and hugged her lifeless body for a minute before forcing her tears to cease. There would be time to mourn later, and if she didn't move quickly, she might meet the same fate as this young girl.

Hugging her bag to her chest, she crawled to the tent wall, ducked beneath it and took off into the cold desert night.


	11. The Wanderer

**CHAPTER 9**

**"The Wanderer"**

They were following her.

Or, at least, they had been. Faintly, she had heard a man shout "She is missing!" as she sprinted from the dig site.

She ran and ran, as fast as her legs could carry her, until it turned into more of a stumble.

The image in her mind of those bodies was enough to keep her running. The memory of the metallic smell of the blood, the fact that the screams her subconscious had incorporated into that dream were actual shrieks of terror.

The look on Emmy Witsell's face before she died was etched into her eyelids. She was so scared. A simple American girl from Connecticut, on a trip she wasn't all that bothered about, had been murdered tonight.

What would her parents know of this? What would anybody know of this? All of the diggers were dead, without a doubt. Lallier, Jeffrys, and probably Sherif— lovely, kindly Sherif— all murdered in the middle of the desert, on an excavation she had insisted they take part in.

Meela had been kidnapped, from what she gathered. Dr. Bunbury, too.

Would those savages have spared another life? Had anybody at all escaped?

She saw their trucks, and wondered if they were for the soldier men or the prisoners they took. As for the Scrolls of Thebes... Well, she had dishonoured Terence Bey's memory. She had practically placed those sacred items in the hands of The Cult.

The thought of it all kept her running. She was ashamed, all at once terrified and wracked with guilt and so very, very angry.

The pain of the desert night's cold biting at her bare flesh had been received with open arms; she deserved it, every part of it, for luring innocent people to their demises.

Morning came, and with the bright sunrise her paranoia began to fade. Nobody was following her. She climbed to the top of a tall dune to check, and that was when she found that _nothing_ was following _anything_ out here.

She was in the middle of nowhere.

There wasn't a flicker of life for hundreds of miles. All she could see was sand— glaring yellow sand, sand that travelled in ripples and waves and burned the soles of her feet by midday.

There were no oases, not a tree in sight. No travellers, no Bedouins.

In her sheer terror, the notion of getting lost in the Sahara wasn't one that even flitted through her mind. Now, however, she saw that she was as likely to die out here as if she had been kidnapped by those men.

She had no food and, more importantly, no water.

When the sun was at its highest, she sat down and emptied the contents of her handbag into the sand.

Terence's journal, an empty matchbox, her house keys, Jonathan's last letter... An untouched case of Tangee lipstick, and _'The Ancient Egyptians: Their Life and Customs, Volume 2_'.

"No water, no food," she said to herself, "But I have my million pound Chanel handbag! Bloody fantastic!"

In raging frustration, she grabbed the expensive handbag Meela had given her shook it at the heavens, a scream of anger leaving her throat somewhat cathartically.

She tossed it into the sand and then utterly lost her temper with the blasted leather sack. Standing, she threw it in the air and booted it as far as she could, before collapsing in a fit of laughter.

The tears of hilarity lasted for a long time, and then they turned to sobs. The afternoon drew on, and Pyrrah found herself crying hopelessly as she retrieved the handbag and put her few belongings back inside it.

Night fell.

Perry had nothing, not a scrap of fabric aside from her nightgown with which to cover herself. And fashioning a hat out of the handbag wasn't going to help anybody.

She was cold, dressed immodestly, and knew that praying for heat was a ridiculous notion, as she was probably going to die of dehydration the next day.

For a while, she gave up.

_Might as well say goodbye,_ she thought. _I led all those people to their deaths. The Cult has the scrolls, anyway, which means they'll find the Bracelet of Anubis and rule the world._

In days gone by she had chastised Ardeth for his pessimism. Now, she was ready for death, as the forthcoming apocalypse was all her fault.

Morning came again, and she sat atop a sand dune and watched the sunrise with a surprising lack of emotion.

She didn't want to die today, and the world's end was yet to happen. So, she walked.

Drifting between depression, anxiety, tiredness, hungriness and raw devastation, the heat began to get to her head.

"How many miles have I walked, Jonathan?" she asked thin air.

"I'd say at least seven million, my dear." Jonathan replied.

Perry stopped, swayed on the spot, and then broke down into another fit of laughter. In her mind, Jonathan was laughing, too.

"Seven million?" she shouted. "Mr. Carnahan, there's no such thing, you bloody fool!"

Long before that point had she stopped sweating, and the skin on her forearms became as dry as the desert floor. She was dizzy, so incredibly dizzy, but there was nothing to hold her upright.

Hunger disappeared in favour of a sickening hollowness of her stomach, and when night fell again and she cried in anguish, her eyes produced not a single tear.

She wandered on, watching the stars in the sky with a sort of delirious fascination.

"I'm heading west," she said aloud, like the constellations might confirm it. "I am surely in Timbuktu by now."

Her legs gave way a short while after that. She lay in the sand, full of regrets, staring at the stars and wondering if she would wake up the next morning.

_If I never agreed to clean out Terence's office,_ she thought, _I would never have found that blasted journal._

The journal seemed to be the root of all her problems. If she had never read from that book, she would be in the company of Ardeth's tribe at this very moment.

Ardeth... He would never know what happened to her. Neither would Jonathan. Mr. Carnahan would assume that his assistant just stopped writing.

Nobody was going to find her body out here. Not even vultures.

Exhaustion was just about to drag her into slumber when a sharp hissing noise made her look around.

Perry sat up.

A snake, probably three feet long, had emerged from the sand below her head.

"Oh, Salam," she said, and laughed. Lazily, she waggled her fingers at it.

The snake looked brown, although it was hard to tell in such darkness, and its scales reflected the moonlight in their gentle ridges.

It stopped and looked at her, tongue flickering, and eyed her fingers.

"Pretty snake. What are you? You're not a cobra—"

The reptile rose its forebody, spread its hood and spat.

Shock was the first thing that registered, and all Perry could do was sit with her jaw dropped and some sort of hot liquid coating her tightly-shut eyes.

Then, the pain hit her.

She screamed.

Burning, stinging, intense pain rocketed through her eyes to the back of her skull, and she fell over in agony, clawing desperately at her face to try and make it stop.

Her screams were involuntary at this point: the pain was unbearable, the worst she had ever felt, and the fact that she was vulnerable near a massive cobra made her panic all the more.

She yelled for help, but it would never come. Opening her eyes a tad to see where the snake was, she found it had slithered away, probably back to its underground home. But her surroundings were hazy and throbbed with the pounding of her pulse, a mesh of liquid and darkness and blurred stars that spun and stretched like a hallucination.

The pain intensified further, and she wondered if this was how she was going to meet her end. It felt like her brain itself was swelling, like her eyes were about to set fire in their sockets.

Tortured yells falling on only the desert's deaf ears, she collapsed and listened to her own thundering heartbeat. Before she could consider tearing her own eyes out— Bernard Burns seemed the fortunate one for a time— hallucinations seized her again.

"No snakes in England," Jonathan told her. "At least, I don't think there are... Well, I only know what you know, old girl, so there are no snakes in England."

Perry wailed and sobbed through his voice, a tiny part of her knowing that he wasn't actually there, and then her arms fell limp and the blood rushed away from her head.

Unconsciousness lulled her away from the otherworldly pain, and all too soon she was blind to her solitude and numbed by slumber.

"Hello?"

She thought, just for a fleeting moment before she gave in, that somebody's voice had drifted across the plains.

"Hello?"

But it was too feeble, too unsure, and so she decided it was an angel waiting for her in the afterlife.


	12. Jonathan's Letter 3

My Dearest Perry,

I'm sure you'll be relieved to know that I fit in at our local pub like feathers on a duck.

It's a lovely place, and I realised yesterday that you know nothing of the establishment. So, let me tell you a bit about my pub.

It's called The Quinny, and it's much nicer than the Sultan's Casbah, believe you me. Bunch of gentlemen with moustaches and pipes, sitting by the fire in the front room, talking politics and drinking scotch... My kind of people, Perry.

Sure, they looked down at me at first, played me off for some wurpy boozehound, and perhaps they _are_ a little wiser than old Jonathan. But none of them are richer. They're all bankers and they've worked for decades to be able to sit in the front room of The Quinny.

Me? Well, I've found Hamunaptra, saved the world, and I have my golden sceptre here to prove it's true. And I'm at least twenty years younger than the youngest chap in the pub!

Yes, life is rather wonderful. I come home in the morning, sleep all day, and then go out again at night. Women, friends, laughs— I have it all, Perry!

Life truly is sweet.

Well, with the exception of Yvette, who continues to be a thorn in my side.

But she's beside the point. My point is that I am very much enjoying being back home after all these years, and I absolutely think that you should come and visit.

Just think: I'd pick you up at the airport, you'd see Evy and O'Connell again, I'd show you our humble abode, and you'd meet little Alexander— who I'm certain you would simply adore. I'd take you on a pub crawl, even if you won't drink or anything, and we could go to the race tracks and bet on a horse or two.

And people would be impressed if I spent a week with a pretty Egyptian woman on my arm. "How exotic", they'd say. "Look at Jonathan Carnahan, and that mysterious lady fetching him a drink. He's got it made, that fellow!"

Yes... I really do think you visiting would be beneficial to everyone.

And I've been invited up to Scotland this coming January, for a bit of a get-together between archaeologists and whatnot. Bumped into an old friend of my father's in town, and he told me all about this lovely castle that the industry's finest are checking into after Christmas.

I'm not too keen on the idea right now, but if you popped over here, I'd be willing to take you up there. Scotland's a fine country, you know. Bagpipes, kilts and all that tosh. I could show you my hunting skills (did I mention I'm a five-time champion of the fox and hounds hunting games?), or teach you to golf, and you'll just love the Scottish accent.

Who knows, if you brought the hijab over here, you might start a trend!

All I'm saying is that, between the parties and women and riches, I'm quite missing you.

Do reply soon, Sweetheart.

Cheerio,

Jon.


	13. The Strangers

**CHAPTER 10**

**"The Strangers"**

Darkness.

"Janaan, what are you wearing?"

"Nothing."

"What is on your face right now? Is that... paint?"

"No."

"Then what is it?"

"Whatever was in her handbag."

Before there was feeling, before there was any comprehension of anything at all, Perry heard the voices.

"Ah! It is lipstick. When your sister gets back with the water, wash it off."

"But I like it. My lips are the colour of figs. I look mysterious."

There were two of them. The first voice belonged to a woman, and there was an authoritative tone to it.

The second voice belonged to somebody younger. Janaan, the first voice had called her. Her voice was higher, and happier, and confident in its words.

"Fine. You can keep it on," the first voice said, disgruntled. "But cover your face when you go outside."

Perry's mind was blank, but she didn't panic. Not yet. Perhaps she was too tired.

Her body was immobile, and she didn't wish it to move. She was calm and cool; wherever she lay was a shaded area, free of the scorching dessert heat that had plagued her for days.

It took a minute, and then all of the memories of the past few days came flooding back. The scrolls, the excavation, the massacre, Emmy Witsell, the desert... The snake.

There was a dull throbbing behind her eyes, and a stinging sensation forced her to keep them still. But she wanted to open them, because those voices were so very interesting.

"How is everything?"

"No change. Where is Nora?"

A new voice emerged from nearby. Another woman; this one spoke with a sigh, like it was tiring her to sound so jolly.

"On her way back, I think." there was a groan and some shuffling, like this third lady had sat down with much effort. She huffed. "Maliq has been playing with scorpions again."

"What?!"

"Ommee has him now, it's alright."

First Voice let out a frustrated groan when Third told her this, and there was the sound of hasty movement.

"What is that boy's problem..." First Voice mumbled, and there was silence once she faded away.

A flap of heavy fabric in the wind, and somebody else spoke.

"How is the lady?"

"Rahim, you're not allowed in here."

Third Voice whispered sternly to a fourth, whose name was apparently Rahim.

Rahim was a boy. His voice wasn't deep enough to belong to a grown man, but he lacked the pitch of a child's vocal chords.

"I found her! I have a right to know what is happening."

So these people, Rahim namely, had found Perry in the desert. Had they brought her into their home? Where was she?

Lying on something very comfortable, cool as a cucumber with no thirst for water and no dryness in her throat, that much was certain.

Wanting to see them, she opened her eyes.

Darkness. She blinked; her eyelids met a cloth of some sort, which she could feel was tied in a knot that pressed into the back of her head.

_I'll have to wait a while longer._

"Omaira will kill you," Janaan said to Rahim, her young voice smug.

"Omaira's not here."

There was a pause.

"Who do you think she is?" Rahim asked.

Somebody let out a wistful sigh.

"I think she is a princess." Third Voice said.

Rahim scoffed.

"A princess? Why would a princess be lost in the middle of the desert?"

Third Voice chuckled.

"Ooh, I don't know... Maybe it is because she was chased here by an evil werehyena."

Janaan let out a gasp.

Excitedly, she gushed,

"Oh, tell us a story, Qadira! Please! Please!"

Third Voice was named Qadira, then.

Qadira chuckled.

"Okay," she said, whispering to build the tale's intensity. "This lady here is a princess. From an Alexandrian tribe of djinn."

Janaan giggled.

"Djinn?" Rahim repeated, sounding as if he wasn't impressed.

"Yes, she is a magical djinn princess. And she is the most powerful of all of her sisters. She could snap her fingers and turn you to sand."

Janaan gasped.

"But she won't," Qadira insisted. "Because she is good. But she is cursed. Because her father— the evil king djinn— fed all of his wives to werehyenas."

Perry smiled to herself, but it obviously went unnoticed. The sounds of the young girl gasping and cooing at the lady's ridiculous story were funny.

"Why did he kill them?" Janaan whispered.

"Because he was evil, obviously." Rahim mumbled.

Qadira went on.

"As punishment for the sins of her father, a witch visited this princess on the day of her birth and cast a spell. The spell meant that Princess must go on an epic quest to find the keeper of the magical lipstick... And if she fails to do it by this winter, all of the djinn will die."

There was silence for a minute. Janaan's voice broke the tension in a tiny whisper.

"I am the keeper of the magical lipstick."

Qadira chuckled darkly.

"Well, you know what that means," she said. "Rahim... tickle her!"

There was a roar, and then Janaan squealed. Perry felt movement at the end of her feet, and somebody bumped her. There was laughing, and Janaan began begging Rahim to stop tickling her.

"What are you doing?"

This was a new voice. Another girl's voice.

"Rahim, stop!" Janaan sputtered between fits of laughter.

"Just sitting. It took you long enough to get that water." Qadira said.

_So this was who they were waiting for,_ Perry thought. _What did they say her name was? Nora?_

There was a sloshing noise, and Perry felt the cushioned surface beneath her head shift under a heavy weight.

"Glad you appreciate it." Nora grumbled, now close-by.

There was a splash, and then the sloshing, dripping sounds of somebody wringing a cloth out.

"Fetching water is the only thing my husband is good for, and he's not even here."

Qadira tutted.

"You are too harsh on him, Nora. The boy tries."

"Easy for you to say," she retorted. "You and Omaira married true warriors. I could break my husband's arms like—"

Perry screwed up her face in discomfort when a cold, wet cloth was slapped onto her forehead. Beads of water spilled onto the fabric around her eyes, and some rolled back into her hair.

She groaned a little and flinched, hands instinctively travelling up to wipe her face.

Apparently, though, the others had seen her movements.

"She's waking up!" Qadira hissed.

The cloth was yanked from her face immediately. A round of gasps filled the air.

"Get Omaira! Get Omaira!"

_I might as well move, now_.

Perry shifted her head, and groaned again when she found how stiff her neck was.

"What do we do?" Qadira whispered.

There was the flap of heavy fabric again, and the rustling of moving people.

"Look, see!" Janaan said.

"Alright, alright," First Voice told everybody, calming whatever panic had arisen. "Madam, can you hear me?"

Perry opened her mouth.

"Yes," she replied, her voice croaky from lack of use.

She reached up and touched the cloth covering her eyes.

"Wh—"

"You have snake venom in your eyes, dear," the lady in charge said. "I can take your blindfold off, but you won't be able to see us very well."

Perry frowned, but stayed still as a foreign pair of hands gently removed the cloth from her face.

The light, however soft and shaded it may have been, made her suck in a pained breath. The world around her was distorted and blurry to a frightening degree, but she could make out five figures of people crouched around her.

They were all staring at her, watching with concern or intrigue. She felt like a circus animal.

"How are you feeling, Coco?"

Perry blinked several times and widened her eyes, but First Voice lady had been right: her vision wasn't clearing up.

She frowned and shook her head.

_Did she just call me Coco?_

"Umm... Okay. I feel... okay." she answered.

"Good, good."

Perry found the strength to push herself into a sitting position. They were in a tent of some sort, the walls of which were composed of bright linens of red and maroon and orange.

The entryway was up ahead, and the bucket of water at her side.

She lay on a collection of quilts and pillows and blankets, and her nightgown had been exchanged for a cotton thobe.

"My name is Omaira," said the lady whose voice she had first heard.

Perry could barely see Omaira, but even through the restrictions of visual impairment she could make out a frowning face. Perhaps her imagination had pieced that together, though.

As suspected, Omaira was a grown woman, tall-looking and nicely dressed in robes of deep purple. Her dark hair was uncovered, and left the edges of her face blurred against a waterfall of blackness.

"This is Qadira, my younger sister." Omaira said, gesturing to the woman on her left.

Qadira gave Perry a wave. Dressed from head to toe in a soft blue, Perry had to blink a few times to check that what she saw of the woman was correct.

Indeed, the massive swelling of her belly was no hallucination or trick of damaged eyes. Qadira was very pregnant, plump and looking about ready to pop.

"This is our sister, Nora," she said, pointing to the girl by the bucket. "And that's our brother, Rahim."

Nora had an air of unhappiness about her. Her thin frame was adorned entirely with black and so was indistinct. Perry had heard her talking about her husband, yet the way she sat with hunched shoulders made her seem more like a moody teenager than somebody's wife.

Rahim was at the other side of where she lay, and he looked to be in a happier mood than his sister. He waved shyly; his dark hair was quite lengthy, and the clothes he wore were brown and seemed simple.

"And lastly, this is Janaan."

At Rahim's side, Janaan sat. Easily the youngest, the lipstick she wore from Perry's handbag would have been noticeable a mile away.

She didn't wave; Perry couldn't see what her face looked like— what any of their faces looked like— but Janaan had fallen so silent since she awoke that it made Perry think she was frightened, or at least apprehensive. Perhaps it was because her sister told her she was a djinn.

"I... thank you all for providing such hospitality," Perry said, turning her head back to Omaira. "I would surely have perished had you not taken me in."

"That's alright, Coco," Qadira said, brightly, grabbing her attention. "Who would we be to leave a person to die? When Rahim found you a couple of days ago, we did not think twice about our decision to bring you back to health."

Perry nodded in appreciation, and then frowned.

"Not to sound rude... But how come you are calling me 'Coco'?" she asked.

Qadira reached to her side and picked up something black, which she realised was her handbag. The pregnant woman opened the top and peered inside.

"Well, your name is sewn onto the inside of your bag. Coco Chanel, is it not?"

Five people stared at Perry expectantly.

"Um... Yes," she said. "Yes, it is."

Qadira hummed triumphantly and put the bag back down.

"Well, Miss. Chanel, you better put your blindfold back on." Omaira said. Yes, she was definitely the oldest sibling, sensible and in control. "If you wear your eyes out too much, you might go blind."

"Permanently." Nora added. She said it almost smugly.

Perry allowed Nora and Omaira to retie the ragged cloth around her eyes, and suddenly everything was dark again.

"I'll fetch you some more water," Omaira said.

"Can't we make her some red tea?" she heard Rahim ask.

The tent door flapped open. Omaira answered him before stepping out.

"No," she said. "We are out of sugar, remember?"

* * *

Between bouts of sleep and a lot of water consumption, Perry became rather adjusted to the five people who were nursing her back to health.

She considered them angels. Strange angels, of course, but they had saved her life.

And, though they were obviously curious as to how on earth a girl like herself ended up half-dead in the desert, they didn't demand to know much about her at all.

After two days, Omaira had her remove her blindfold. Her vision was very blurred, and the skin around her eyes felt incredibly sore, but the awful headaches were much less consistent.

With such improvements, it was unanimously decided that 'Coco' could leave the tent.

"This is our home," Qadira told Perry when they stepped outside.

The tent she had been kept in was one of ten or so, and by far the smallest. Apparently, it belonged to Nora and her husband, but was spare as of late since Nora's spouse was away.

Nora was staying with Rahim and Janaan and their mother in the biggest tent of the lot.

"This is where we grew up," Qadira said, as they walked past it. "Six of us, and ommee and abbi. Abbi's in paradise now, and only Rahim and Janaan still live with our mother."

Waddling in the way that pregnant women did, Qadira took Perry around to each tent.

Her tent was a modest one, the home of she and her husband, Sabir, who was also away. Soon, they would be sharing it with their first child.

Qadira's sister-in-law and her children lived beside them, as did her husband's parents. The entire encampment was a community of relatives, as was proved again when they reached Omaira's tent.

"Omaira lives here with her sons, Maliq and Kamil. Little terrors, those boys."

Omaira's sister-in-law and mother-in-law lived beside her, as well, and it became apparent that the current occupants of the tribal village were mostly women.

"That is Yasmin and Badar's tent," Qadira told her, sighing as she gestured to a small tent on the outskirts of the area. "They are half siblings, orphaned when they were young. Yasmin is a strange lady, she rarely leaves her tent and does not talk to us much."

Badar, too, was away, as was Omaira's husband, whose name was Hamal. The large tent belonging to Qadira's oldest brother was uninhabited, too.

"And there is a small oasis that way, where we get our water from."

There were a few camels around, and a couple of goats that bleated when the ladies walked by.

"Where is the nearest city?" Perry asked her.

Qadira looked off at the horizon.

"From here, it takes about a day on horseback to reach Cairo," she said. "Is that where you need to be, Coco?"

Perry didn't know what to tell her.

She didn't have to be anywhere. What was she supposed to do at the moment? Her friends and colleagues had been massacred, Meela Nais had been kidnapped and an evil cult had hold of the Scrolls of Thebes— all because of her.

She didn't know where The Cult were going, or what they intended to do with their hostages. Even if she had the power, she wouldn't have known where to begin.

Ardeth, as much as she had thought of him and wondered what he was doing, could have been anywhere between Tanta and his tribe by now.

And since she had met Qadira and her sisters only a few days ago and they were still calling her 'Coco', she didn't even attempt to give them explanation.

"I suppose so..." she just muttered, indecisively.

"Well, when my brother gets back, I'll have him take you there," Qadira said, and then yawned.

She smoothed her dress over her round stomach and sighed.

"Ugh. I am so tired," she moaned. "And there's so much to do. We have to prepare for the celebrations of Eid al-Fitr, you know."

Perry raised an eyebrow.

"Big celebrations?"

She always fasted during Ramadan, but she hadn't shared the holiday following it with anybody for years. She had lived by herself since childhood, and Jonathan hadn't the foggiest idea of what the Feast of Breaking the Fast consisted of.

"Yes, this year is particularly special for our tribe," Qadira said. "Our sister tribes are going to be travelling here as guests, and that's just the half of it. Rahim is going to be ceremonially declared a man."

They had stopped by her tent to talk, and she now pushed aside the doorway and led Perry into the shade.

Qadira's home was cozy. There was a kettle and tea set on the floor, and strategically placed chess pieces sat atop a wooden chessboard beside it. Colourful scarves and blankets hung from the walls, and Perry sat herself on a wicker basket as Qadira lay back, exhausted, on her bed of cushions.

"Well, I can help you out. I owe you and your family my life. It's the least I can do." she offered.

Qadira let out a tired laugh.

"Oh, it's more than a party, Coco. A bride is going to be chosen for my older brother to marry," she told her. "The wedding will take place next week."

* * *

_Arabic:_

_ommee- my mom_

_abbi- my dad_


End file.
